Can I cite a website in APA without prior writing experience?

You definitely can cite a website in APA style even if you have never written an academic paper before, so do not panic. Stepping back into a college English class after a ten-year break is a huge leap, and staring down a looming deadline with a brand-new citation format feels like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instruction manual in the dark. It is totally normal to feel overwhelmed right now, but I promise that formatting a web source is much simpler than it looks once you know the basic formula. Think of an APA citation like a simple recipe where you just need to plug in the right ingredients in the right order. For an in-text citation, you usually just need the author's last name and the year of publication inside parentheses, like Smith, 2021, placed right at the end of the sentence before the period. For the full reference list at the end of your paper, the formula is just author, year, article title in italics, and the website name followed by the direct URL. If the article does not list a specific author, you just use the name of the organization or website instead, and if there is no date, you pop in the abbreviation n.d. for no date. Since your deadline is in three days, take a deep breath, grab your articles, and tackle them one by one rather than looking at the whole assignment at once. You have got all the life experience and smarts you need to handle this class, and once you get the hang of this first reference, the rest will click into place.