Found in 5-10% of dissertations we analyze. A missing comma between author and year — (Smith 2020) instead of (Smith, 2020) — is one of the most common APA errors, and one of the easiest to fix.
Insert a comma between the author name and year.
APA 7th edition requires a comma between the author name and the publication year in every parenthetical citation: (Smith, 2020), not (Smith 2020). This also applies to multiple authors: (Smith & Jones, 2020), and to et al. citations: (Smith et al., 2020). The comma is not optional, and its absence is one of the first things form-and-style reviewers check.
This error matters more than you might think. APA formatting isn't just about aesthetics — it's about demonstrating that you can follow a standardized system precisely. Your committee reads the presence or absence of these small details as a signal about your attention to detail throughout the entire document. If you're sloppy with commas in citations, what else did you get wrong?
The good news is this is one of the simplest fixes in your entire dissertation. A find-and-replace pass looking for parenthetical patterns without commas can catch most instances. Many reference managers handle this automatically, but if you've manually typed citations or copied them from other formats, you may have inconsistencies throughout your document.
Missing commas in citations violate APA 7th edition formatting rules.
(Anderson 2022)
(Anderson, 2022)
Basic parenthetical citation — comma required between author and year.
(Johnson 2021)
(Johnson, 2021)
Two-author citation — comma still required before the year.
(Smith & Wesson 2019)
(Smith & Wesson, 2019)
Et al. citation — comma required between "al." and year.
(Brown et al. 2022)
(Brown et al., 2022)
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