APA Obscura: TED Talks

Few things send us down a late-night internet rabbit hole quite like TED Talks – short, wide-ranging, and genuinely hard to stop watching. They're also a legitimate source for academic research papers, which means the APA has rules for citing them. Let's take a look.

What counts as a TED Talk source?

Before diving into formats, it's worth noting that "TED Talk" can mean a few different things when it comes to sourcing. The most common scenarios you'll run into are:

• A video hosted on TED.com – the official home of TED and TEDx content
• A TED Talk video on YouTube – many talks are officially published on the TED YouTube channel
• A TEDx Talk – independently organized TED-style events held around the globe

The APA format is essentially the same for all three; however, what changes slightly is the source URL and, for TEDx, how you label the speaker.

Let's talk about it (see what we did there?).

The basic APA format for a TED Talk

APA 7th Edition treats TED Talks as online videos. That means your reference entry follows the format for a streaming video source. Here's the template:

Speaker Last Name, Initials. (Year, Month Day). Title of talk [Video]. TED Conferences. URL

Let's break it down, piece by piece.

Author

Use the speaker's last name followed by their first and middle initials – the same author format the APA uses across the board. If a talk has no clearly identified speaker (unusual, but possible), you can use the organization name – TED Conferences – as the author. In that case, TED Conferences moves to the author position and would not appear again in the source position.

Date

Use the date the video was published or posted online, not the date the talk was originally delivered. You'll typically find this on the TED.com page or on YouTube. Include the year, month, and day in parentheses: (2021, March 19).

Title

Italicize the title of the talk and use sentence case – capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word after a colon, and any proper nouns. Follow the title with [Video] in square brackets (not italicized) to identify the source type.

Source

For talks on TED.com, the source is TED Conferences. For talks on YouTube – even the official TED channel – the source is YouTube. End the entry with the direct URL to the video.

TED Talk APA reference examples

Talk on TED.com

Robinson, K. (2006, February). Do schools kill creativity? [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity

Talk on YouTube (Official TED Channel)

Robinson, K. (2007, January 6). Do schools kill creativity? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

TEDx Talk

Urban, T. (2016, February). Inside the mind of a master procrastinator [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator

Note: TEDx Talks are formatted the same way as standard TED Talks. Many TEDx Talks are later published on TED.com – if that's where you accessed the video, TED Conferences is your source, and you don't need to note "TEDx" separately in your reference. The URL will make the source clear.

APA in-text citations for TED Talks

In-text citations for TED Talks follow standard APA parenthetical format: (Author Last Name, Year). Since TED Talks are videos, there are no page numbers. If you're referencing a specific moment in the talk, you can use a timestamp instead.

• General reference: (Robinson, 2006)
• With timestamp: (Robinson, 2006, 4:32)

Timestamps aren't required, but they're a helpful touch if you're quoting a specific line or pointing readers to a particular moment.

A few things to double-check

Before you finalize your reference entry, run through this quick checklist:

• Use the publication date, not the talk date. The year in your citation should match when the video was posted online.
• Italicize the title, not the label. The talk title is italicized; [Video] in brackets is not.
• Match your source to your URL. TED.com links = TED Conferences. YouTube links = YouTube.

PERRLA handles online video references – including TED Talks – automatically. Just select the video reference type, fill in the details, and PERRLA will take care of the formatting. Try PERRLA free for 7 days – no credit card required.