No Author, Date, or Title in APA Style | Formats & Examples

Published on November 6, 2020 by Bas Swaen.

This article reflects the APA 6th edition guidelines. Click here for APA 7th edition guidelines.

Web resources form a separate category in APA Style. They consist of four components: author, publication date, title and URL.

Unfortunately, some of these components are often missing. For instance, there may be no author or publication date. What should you do if this is the case?

All information available
No author
No date
No title
No author or date
No author or title
No date or title
No author, date or title

What’s missing?	Solution
Nothing	–
No author	Use title in place of author.
No date	Use “n.d.” (“no date”) in place of year.
No title	Describe the source in brackets.
No author or date	Combine no author and no date.
No author or title	Combine no author and no title.
No date or title	Combine no date and no title.
No author, date or title	Combine no author, no date and no title.

All information available

Online article
Format	Author Last Name, Initials. (Year, Month Day). Article Title [Type]. Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	Worland, J. (2015, July 27). U.S. flood risk could be worse than we thought. Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	An article on Time suggests that … (Worland, 2015). In a news article, Worland (2015) suggests that … .

No author

Online article: No author
Format	Article Title. [Type] (Year, Month Day). Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	U.S. flood risk could be worse than we thought. (2015, July 27). Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	An article on Time suggests that … (“U.S. flood risk,” 2015).

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No date

Online article: No date
Format	Author Last Name, Initials. (n.d.). Article Title [Type]. Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	Worland, J. (n.d.). U.S. flood risk could be worse than we thought. Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	An article on Time suggests that … (Worland, n.d.). In a news article Worland (n.d.) suggests that … .

No title

Online article: No title
Format	Author Last Name, Initials. (Year, Month Day). [Description of document]. Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	Worland, J. (2015, July 27). [Flood risk in the US]. Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	An article on Time suggests that … (Worland, 2015). In a news article Worland (2015) suggests that … .

No author or date

Online article: No author or date
Format	Article Title. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	U.S. flood risk could be worse than we thought. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	In an article from Time,…(“U.S. flood risk,” n.d.). In an article from Time entitled “U.S. flood risk could be worse than we thought” (n.d.),…

No author or title

Online article: No author or title
Format	[Description of article]. (Year, Month Day). Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	[Flood risk in the US]. (2015, July 27). Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	In an article from Time,… ([Flood risk in the US], 2015). An article from Time describing flood risk in the US (2015) suggests that…

No date or title

Online article: No date or title
Format	Author Last Name, Initials. (n.d.). [Description of document]. Retrieved from http://WebAddress
Reference list	Worland, J. (n.d.). [Flood risk in the US]. Retrieved from http://time.com/3973256/flooding-risk-coastal-cities/
In-text citation	In an article from Time,… (Worland, n.d.). In an article from Time, Worland (n.d.) suggests that…