APA 7 : text term "accesssed" vs. "retrieved" for access date

FrederiqueFlamerie · 2025-12-17T08:36:01+00:00

In APA 7, the text term displayed for the access date is "retrieved" (line 1693). From what I understand from the CSL documentation, the term "accessed" would be more appropriate, see : https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html#group. In other styles such as IEEE or Chicago, the text term "accessed" is preferred over "retrieved" in the same context. Finally, the correct output in French would be "consulté le 16 décembre 2025", which would be obtained with the text term "accessed". With "retrieved" the output is "consulté 16 décembre 2025".

damnation · 2025-12-17T10:29:24+00:00

The CSL documentation has nothing to do with this. That just explains how CSL works.

What's important is the APA documentation. See example 6 here which clearly states what a citation with an access date should look like:
https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/webpage-website-references

FrederiqueFlamerie · 2025-12-17T13:08:43+00:00

Thank you for your response. Would correcting the French translation of the term “retrieved” in the locale fr files be a better approach?

damnation · 2025-12-17T13:13:20+00:00

For language specifics we usually try to see if there is an authorative guide for said language or if there is a predominant variant. Can you show us either/both?

FrederiqueFlamerie · 2025-12-17T13:24:15+00:00

In fr-FR, "retrieved" would be "consulté le", see: https://www.hepl.ch/files/live/sites/files-site/files/filiere-ps/programme-formation/normes-apa-stage-maeps-fps-hep-vaud.pdf#page=22
In fr-CA, "retrieved" would be "repéré le", see : https://boite-outils.bib.umontreal.ca/citer/apa?p=5248897

adamsmith · 2025-12-17T15:43:06+00:00

I think we'll want to keep those translations specific to the APA style, i.e. add them to the locale there rather then the general French locales. As the specification section you link to suggests, "retrieved" can also be used together with "from" and then "consulte le" would break.

FrederiqueFlamerie · 2025-12-17T16:23:22+00:00

Great, thank you very much.