How to Cite a TED Talk in APA 7th Edition

Citing a TED Talk in APA looks simple until you notice that the same talk may appear on both TED.com and YouTube. That small difference changes who you list as the author, which date you use, and which website appears in the reference.

The easiest rule is this: cite the version you actually watched.

If you watched the talk on TED.com, the speaker is normally treated as the author. If you watched it on YouTube, the person or organization that uploaded the video is treated as the author. This distinction is supported by current APA guidance and university APA 7 guidance.

Quick APA Format for a TED Talk

Before building the citation, check where you viewed the talk.

Where you watched it	Author in reference	Website or publisher
TED.com	TED Talk speaker	TED Conferences
YouTube	Video uploader or channel	YouTube

For most students, this one check prevents the biggest citation mistake.

TED.com reference template

Use this structure when you watched the video on the official TED website:

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

The in-text citation normally looks like this:

(Speaker’s Last Name, Year)

For example:

(Sivaram, 2020)

YouTube reference template

If you watched the talk on YouTube, use:

Channel Name. (Year, Month Day). Title of video [Video]. YouTube. URL

The in-text citation uses the uploader’s name:

(Channel Name, Year)

For a video uploaded by TED, that could appear as:

(TED, 2020)

The difference matters because APA references are designed to help readers locate the exact source you used, not merely identify the person who spoke.

How to Cite a TED Talk From TED.com

When the official TED website is your source, begin the reference with the speaker’s name.

The basic order is:

1. Speaker’s surname and initials
2. Publication year and month
3. Title of the TED Talk
4. Description [Video]
5. TED Conferences
6. Direct URL

A published example used in APA citation guidance is:

Sivaram, V. (2020, October). India’s historic opportunity to industrialize using clean energy [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/varun_sivaram_india_s_historic_opportunity_to_industrialize_using_clean_energy

The corresponding in-text citation is:

(Sivaram, 2020)

Scribbr and Trent University’s APA 7 guidance both use this speaker-as-author approach for talks accessed through TED.com.

You can also use a narrative citation when the speaker’s name fits naturally into your sentence:

Sivaram (2020) discusses the role clean energy could play in industrial development.

Here, the speaker’s surname appears in your sentence, so only the year goes in parentheses.

How to Cite a TED Talk From YouTube

The rules change when the same type of talk is viewed on YouTube.

APA treats the person or organization that uploaded the video as the author of the YouTube source. That means a TED Talk uploaded to the official TED YouTube channel is normally listed under TED, even though someone else delivers the talk.

The format is:

Uploader. (Year, Month Day). Title of video [Video]. YouTube. URL

One example is:

TED. (2020, November 3). The radical act of choosing common ground | Nisha Anand [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZfKdlIRqYk

The basic in-text citation becomes:

(TED, 2020)

This can feel odd. You may be discussing Nisha Anand’s ideas, yet your citation says TED.

The clean solution is to identify the speaker in your sentence while keeping the formal citation tied to the YouTube uploader:

Nisha Anand discusses the value of finding common ground in divided communities (TED, 2020).

That tells your reader who actually spoke while preserving the correct APA reference relationship.

Do not change the author to the speaker simply because the speaker seems more important. Your reference should match the version you used.

How to Quote a TED Talk in APA

Paraphrasing normally requires the author and year. Direct quotations from a video need a little more detail because videos do not have page numbers.

For a specific passage, use a timestamp showing where the quoted material begins.

For example:

(Sivaram, 2020, 1:04)

The 1:04 directs the reader to one minute and four seconds into the video. APA-oriented guidance uses timestamps to identify specific moments in audiovisual sources.

Suppose you watched the video on YouTube and want to quote the speaker rather than the channel. You might write:

Nisha Anand explains that “[short quotation]” (TED, 2020, 1:59).

The wording of your sentence identifies Anand as the speaker. The citation still uses TED because TED uploaded the YouTube video.

That distinction between speaker and citation author is easy to miss.

If you are only summarizing the overall idea of a talk, a timestamp is usually unnecessary:

(TED, 2020)

Use the timestamp when pointing the reader to a particular statement, quotation, or moment.

What About TEDx Talks and Transcripts?

TEDx Talks can be handled using the same source-based logic.

Do not choose a citation format simply because the video says TED or TEDx. Look at where you accessed it.

If a TEDx Talk is hosted on YouTube, follow the APA format for the YouTube video and use the account that uploaded it as the author. APA’s YouTube guidance bases authorship on the uploader so readers can locate the cited source.

For example, imagine a TEDx organization uploads a talk through its own YouTube account. That organization’s channel name would normally appear in the author position rather than automatically using the speaker’s name.

Transcripts require similar care.

If you use a transcript mainly to follow along with a video but your source is the TED Talk itself, cite the TED Talk version you consulted. If you are instead using a separate, publicly available transcript as the source of information, the citation should describe that retrievable source rather than pretending you watched a video you did not use.

Here is what matters: your reference should describe the source your reader could actually retrieve and check.

Is a TED Talk Cited the Same Way as a Speech?

Not always.

A TED Talk is a recorded audiovisual work, so its citation follows the rules for the version of that recording you used.

Other speeches may appear in several forms. You might hear a speech as an online audio recording, watch it as a video, find it in a transcript, or attend it in person.

For an accessible online audio recording of a speech, the reference can include the speaker, date, speech title, a description such as [Speech audio recording], the website, and the URL.

An unrecorded speech creates a different problem. If your readers cannot retrieve the speech in a recording, transcript, or other published source, it may need to be treated as a personal communication rather than placed in the reference list. Personal communications are generally cited only in the text because readers cannot recover them independently.

For example:

(H. So, personal communication, February 19, 2019)

This is why the supporting question “how to APA cite a speech” does not have one universal answer. You first need to know what form of the speech you actually used.

The same principle makes TED Talk citations much easier: identify the source before formatting the reference.

Common TED Talk APA Citation Mistakes

A technically polished reference can still be wrong if it describes the wrong version of the talk. Watch for these problems.

Using the speaker as the YouTube author

If TED uploaded the video to YouTube, the reference generally starts with TED, not the speaker.

You can still name the speaker in your sentence.

Listing TED as the author for a TED.com talk

For a TED Talk accessed on TED’s own website, APA guidance normally uses the speaker as the author.

Mixing dates from different versions

A talk may have one date on TED.com and a different upload date on YouTube. Do not take the author from one version and the date from another.

Use the information attached to the source you actually watched.

Forgetting the source description

Include [Video] after the title when citing the video.

This tells the reader what kind of source appears in the reference.

Forgetting a timestamp for a quotation

A page number cannot guide someone through a video. A timestamp can.

If you quote or discuss a precise moment, point the reader to that location.

Copying an old APA example without checking the edition

Older online examples may use conventions associated with earlier APA editions. If your course requires APA 7, compare any citation template you find with current APA 7 guidance instead of assuming an older example is still correct.

Check the Source Before You Submit

When you need to know how to cite a TED Talk in APA, do not begin by rearranging commas and italics. Begin by checking where you watched it.

For TED.com, the speaker normally appears as the author:

Speaker. (Year, Month). Talk title [Video]. TED Conferences. URL

For YouTube, use the uploading channel:

Uploader. (Year, Month Day). Video title [Video]. YouTube. URL

Then match your in-text citation to the author at the start of that reference. Add a timestamp when you quote or point to a specific moment.

Once the source version is clear, the rest of the APA citation becomes much easier to get right.