APA STYLE: SEVENTH EDITION
These guidelines follow the 2020 7th edition of the American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual, which is widely used in the health and social sciences. They focus on documentation, but the manual addresses issues from abbreviations to layout and should be consulted for further information. In an APA-style paper, you’ll identify the author and year of each source any time you use it. That information directs readers to more detailed entries on a reference list at the paper’s end.
Read the book and attempt the quiz at the end of it
7. The Reference List
The reference list at the end of the paper contains all the sources cited in the paper. Its purpose is to help readers find the materials you used, so each entry must be complete and accurate.
14. Page format. The reference list starts on a new page. Every line is double-spaced, without extra spaces between entries. The word “References” is centered at the top and bolded. The pages are numbered as if they were part of your paper. Manual, pp. 66, 303.
Use the “hanging indent” format: start the first line of each entry at the left margin, but indent all subsequent lines one tab space (five spaces). Manual, p. 66.
15. Order of references. List each source alphabetically by the last name of its first author. If there is no author, alphabetize the source by the first word of its title (excluding a, an, the) Manual, pp. 303-304.
16. Names. Shorten all first and middle names to initials. List all authors by last name first, then initials. If a source has multiple authors, don’t change the order they’re in. Manual, p. 286.
17. Mulitiple authors. If a source has up to 20 authors, list them all. If it has 21 or more, list the first 19, add an ellipse (three dots separated by spaces), and name the last. Manual, p. 286.
18. One author, multiple works. List more than one work by the same author in the order of the years they were published. If multiple works were published in the same year, alphabetize them by their titles and label them (2011a), (2011b). Manual, p. 304.
World Health Organization. (2012). Immunization: Closing the gap…
World Health Organization. (2015a). Global vaccination targets…
World Health Organization. (2015b). Keeping Syrian children free from polio…
19. Dates. Put the year of publication in parentheses immediately after the author’s name(s). In a book, the date is usually on the copyright page behind the title page. The date of a website is trickier: don’t use a “Last Reviewed” date or a website copyright date. Use a “Last Updated” date only when the update clearly applies to the information you’re reading as opposed to some other feature of the page. If your source truly provides no date, use the abbreviation “n.d.” (“no date”) instead of the year. Manual, pp. 262, 290.
If you’re citing a work that’s been republished, put the recent publication date in the usual place, after the author’s name. The original date closes the citation, after any DOI or URL, and looks like this: (Original work published 1815). Manual, p. 265, 325
20. Capitalization. In the title and subtitle of a book, chapter, or article, capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns. In journal, magazine, and newspaper titles, capitalize all major words. Manual, p. 291.
21. Italics. Italicize titles of books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. Also italicize volume numbers in journal references. Leave article and chapter titles alone: don’t italicize them or put them in quotation marks. Manual, p. 293.
22. Publication information. The publication information required for books includes only the name of the publisher; if the publisher is the same as the author, it doesn’t even need that. The requirement for articles includes volume, issue, and page numbers. Manual, pp. 295-296.
23. Databases. APA doesn’t include database information unless a source is available only from a particular database, like Cochran. If you include a database name in your reference (some archival documents can only be found in electronic databases), put it in italics. Manual, p. 296.
24. DOIs. Many sources have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a permanent number that goes with them wherever they’re published online. If your source has a DOI, your citation must include it. The doi itself looks something like 10.xxxx/gobbledygook. It can appear in many formats, but APA only uses one. If you find a doi as part of a larger URL that doesn’t look like the one below, cut out everything except the doi and reformat it. Don’t put a period at the end. Manual, pp. 299-300.
htpps://doi.org/10.xxxx/gobbledygook
25. URLs. If an electronic source has a DOI, don’t include the URL. No DOI? Try to find a URL that links to the source directly. Don’t use a URL specific to a particular library; don’t use a URL specific to a general database like EBSCO or Academic Search Complete. If those are the only URLs you can find, don’t include a URL in your citation. Manual, pp. 299-300.
If your source is available only from a specific database and the URL linking to the document doesn’t require a login, use that URL. If it does require a login, list the URL for the database instead. A URL begins with “http” or “https”: don’t put a “retrieved from” statement before it (except in special situations—see F. below) or a period after it. You can leave your URLs live and hyperlinked (blue, underlined) or you can remove the hyperlinks. Check your teacher’s preference. Manual, pp. 298-299.
26. Retrieval dates. Don’t include retrieval dates for online sources unless the source is both unarchived and expected to change over time (e.g. online dictionary, Google map). Wikipedia pages are archived, so you don’t need to include a retrieval date for them. Manual, p. 290.