Skip to Main Content

APA 6th Edition: Figures and Charts

Utica College Library Guide to APA Citation Style

About Citing Figures and Images

For each type of source that you might copy or adapt a figure from (i.e. a book, journal article, or website), both a general form and an example are provided.

Information on citing and several of the examples in this guide were drawn from the APA Manual (6th ed.).

Numbers in parentheses refer to specific pages in the manual.

Figures (pp. 38, 150-167)

Note:

When you use a figure in your paper that has been adapted or copied directly from another source, you need to reference the original source.  This reference appears as a caption underneath the figure that you copied or adapted for your paper.  You do not have to create a separate entry in your References list for the figure.

Any image that is reproduced from another source also needs to come with copyright permission; it is not enough just to cite the source.

Hints:

  • Number figures consecutively throughout your paper.
  • Double-space the caption that appears under a figure.
Caption under figure (from a book):
     Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Reprinted [or adapted]
     from Book Title (page number), by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname,
     Year, Place of Publication: Publisher. Copyright [Year] by the Name of Copyright Holder.
     Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.

Example:
     Figure 1. Short-term memory test involving pictures. Reprinted from Short-term Memory
     Loss (p. 73), by K. M. Pike, 2008, New York, NY: Mackerlin Press. Copyright  2008 by
     the Association for Memory Research. Reprinted with permission.
    
Caption under figure (from a journal article):
     Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Reprinted [or adapted]
     from “Title of Article,” by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, Year, Journal Title,
     Volume(issue), page number. Copyright [Year] by the Name of Copyright Holder.
     Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.
 
Example:
     Figure 1. Schematic drawings of a bird's eye view of the table (a) and the test phase of
     the choice task (b). Numbers represent the dimensions in centimeters. Adapted from
     "Visual Experience Enhances Infants' Use of Task-Relevant Information in an Action
     Task," by S.-h. Wang and L. Kohne, 2007, Developmental Psychology, 43, p. 1515.
     Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association.
 
Caption under figure (from a web site):
     Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Reprinted [or adapted]
     from Title of Website, by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, Year, Retrieved
     from URL. Copyright [year] by the Name of Copyright Holder. Reprinted [or adapted]
     with permission.
 
Example:
     Figure 1. An example of the cobra yoga position. Reprinted from List of Yoga Postures,
     In Wikipedia, n.d., Retrieved October 28, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
     /List_of_yoga_postures. Copyright 2007 by Joseph Renger. Reprinted with permission.
 
 
 
 
 

Ask Us 24/7

Online help is available anytime via our AskUs 24/7 chat service: