To cite an SEC filing, pull four pieces of information from the document on EDGAR — the company name, the form type (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, and so on), the filing date, and a direct URL — then arrange them according to the style you’re using. Bluebook, APA, MLA, and Chicago all rely on the same underlying facts; they differ only in punctuation, order, and whether the title takes italics or quotation marks.
What to Collect From EDGAR First
Every public-company filing lives in EDGAR, the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system. Access is free and requires no account.1U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. About EDGAR Open the filing before you start formatting and grab the following:
- Registrant name. The full legal name from the cover page, such as “Apple Inc.” or “Alphabet Inc.”
- Form type. The specific SEC form — 10-K (annual report), 10-Q (quarterly report), 8-K (current report), and so on.2SEC.gov. Form 8-K – Current Report
- Filing date. The date the company submitted the document, shown in the filing header. This is not the fiscal period-end date.
- Accession number. A unique 20-character identifier (18 digits and two dashes) EDGAR assigns to each submission, formatted like 0001193125-15-118890.3U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Accessing EDGAR Data
- CIK number. The Central Index Key, a permanent number for each filer that you can use to pull up all of a company’s filings.4U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Understand and Utilize EDGAR CIK and CIK Confirmation Code
- Direct URL. The stable link to the actual filing document, not to a search results page or an index of a company’s filings.
Collect all of these up front. Once you have them, dropping them into any style below takes a minute.
Bluebook Format
The Bluebook has no single rule dedicated to corporate SEC filings. Legal writers cite them as administrative or corporate documents, drawing on the SEC-specific guidance in Table T1.2 (Federal Administrative and Executive Materials) together with the general electronic-source rules under Rule 18.5The Bluebook Online. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
A periodic filing looks like this:
Apple Inc., Annual Report (Form 10-K) (Oct. 31, 2025), https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193.
The order is company name, document description with form number in parentheses, filing date in parentheses (with the month abbreviated), then the URL. Common corporate suffixes get abbreviated (“Corporation” to “Corp.,” “Incorporated” to “Inc.”) following Table T6.6The Bluebook Online. T6 Case Names and Institutional Authors in Citations Because SEC filings have no traditional print equivalent that most readers can reach, an electronic source citation under Rule 18.2.2 is appropriate.
For SEC releases, no-action letters, and exemptive letters, Table T1.2 directs you to cite through an electronic database under Rule 18.3, including the full name of the correspondent and the date the letter became publicly available.5The Bluebook Online. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) For briefs and other practitioner work, use the B14 practitioner-format rules for administrative and executive materials.
APA 7th Edition Format
APA treats the company as the author. Template:
Company Name. (Year, Month Day). Form Type. EDGAR. https://direct-url-to-filing
An example:
Alphabet, Inc. (2024, April 26). Form 10-Q. EDGAR. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204424000053/goog-20240331.htm
The form type is italicized because it functions as the title of the work. If you want to add context for a less familiar form, put a bracketed description after the title, like Form 10-K [Annual report]. “EDGAR” appears in regular text before the URL.
APA 7 dropped the “Retrieved from” language that older guides required. Place the bare URL at the end. The only exception is unarchived content that might change; SEC filings on EDGAR are archived and stable, so skip the retrieval date.
In-Text Citations
Because the company is a group author, the parenthetical uses the company name and year: (Alphabet, Inc., 2024). If you name the company in the sentence, only the year goes in parentheses: “Alphabet, Inc. (2024) reported…”
MLA 9th Edition Format
MLA’s container model fits SEC filings cleanly: EDGAR is the container that holds the document. Template:
“Title of Filing.” EDGAR, Securities and Exchange Commission, filing date, URL.
An example:
“Nike, Inc. Form 10-K for Fiscal Year Ended May 31, 2016.” EDGAR, Securities and Exchange Commission, 2016, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320187/000032018716000336/nke-5312016x10k.htm.
The filing title takes quotation marks (a shorter work inside a larger database). EDGAR, the container, is italicized. The SEC is the publisher. If the cover page doesn’t give you a natural title, build one from the company name and form type, such as “Apple Inc. Form 10-K for Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 2025.” MLA does not require an access date for stable archived content; omit it unless your instructor asks for one.
Chicago Manual of Style Format
Chicago has two systems. Business and legal writing generally uses notes-bibliography; social science work more often uses author-date.
Notes-Bibliography
A footnote or endnote uses commas between elements for readable flow:
1. Apple Inc., Annual Report (Form 10-K), filed October 31, 2025, https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193.
The bibliography entry uses periods and a slightly different order:
Apple Inc. Annual Report (Form 10-K). Filed October 31, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193.
Chicago treats SEC filings as corporate documents and is less rigid than Bluebook or APA. Include enough for a reader to locate the exact filing; you can name EDGAR after the company name if it helps.
Author-Date
The in-text citation is the company name and year in parentheses, without a comma between them: (Apple Inc. 2025). The reference list entry mirrors the bibliography format above.
Proxy Statements, Registration Statements, and Other Forms
The templates above cover any document on EDGAR — swap in the correct form label. A proxy statement is Form DEF 14A. An IPO registration statement is Form S-1. An insider transaction disclosure is Form 4. In APA:
Uber Technologies, Inc. (2019, April 11). Form S-1 [Registration statement]. EDGAR. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000119312519103850/d647752ds1.htm
Adding a bracketed description helps with less common forms. Most readers recognize a 10-K on sight, but “[Registration statement]” or “[Proxy statement]” saves them a lookup.
Mistakes That Break a Citation
The most frequent error is linking to an EDGAR search results page or a company’s filing index rather than the filing itself. Your URL should open the actual document. If a reader clicks and still has to choose which filing to view, the link is wrong.
Dates are the next trap. SEC filings carry at least two: the date filed with the SEC and the fiscal period the filing covers. A 10-K filed on October 31, 2025, may cover the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025. Citation styles generally want the filing date, though MLA sometimes folds the fiscal period into a constructed title.
Watch for company name changes. Cite the name on the document, not the current name. A 2014 filing by “Google Inc.” should be cited as “Google Inc.” even though the company later reorganized under Alphabet Inc.
Finally, cite the filing itself, not a summary of it. Financial news articles and analyst reports often paraphrase SEC filings, but your citation should point to the source document.1U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. About EDGAR EDGAR is free and public, so there’s no paywall reason to cite a secondhand write-up.