APA referencing: templates and examples for books, journals and web pages
An APA reference has two parts: a citation in the running text carrying surname and year – (Andersson, 2021) – and a reference list entry that runs author, year in brackets, title and publisher. APA differs from Harvard in one important way: it is an actual rulebook with a publisher, the American Psychological Association, currently in its seventh edition. The biggest practical change from APA 6 is that three or more authors are shortened to et al. from the very first citation, and that the publisher location has been dropped entirely.
Key takeaways
- APA 7 uses et al. from the first citation whenever a source has three or more authors.
- Publisher location is no longer included – just the publisher name.
- A DOI is written as a full link: https://doi.org/10.1037/xxxxx.
- The reference list is alphabetical with a hanging indent on every entry.
- Every source in the text must appear in the list, and every entry in the list must appear in the text.
What is an APA reference?
An APA reference is a citation following the American Psychological Association’s publication manual, where the author’s surname and year of publication sit in the running text and the full source is given in an alphabetical reference list. APA is the standard in psychology, education, nursing, social work and much of the social sciences.
Unlike Harvard, which is a family of similar author–date systems with no single owner, APA is a published rulebook with a publisher and a current edition. That makes it stricter but also easier to check: there is a right answer. The seventh edition has applied since October 2019. For a side-by-side comparison of the systems, see our guide to Harvard, APA and Oxford, and for the other major system our template-by-template walkthrough of Harvard referencing.
What does the citation look like in the text?
The in-text citation comes in two forms, and the choice between them is stylistic. In the parenthetical form everything sits inside the brackets: Memory improves when practice is spread out over time (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). In the narrative form the author becomes part of the sentence: Karpicke and Roediger (2008) showed that testing beats rereading.
Watch the symbol between authors. Inside brackets APA uses an ampersand (&); in running text you spell out the word and. It is one of the most commonly pencilled-in corrections on a marked draft.
How do you handle multiple authors in APA 7?
In APA 7, sources with three or more authors are cited as the first author followed by et al. from the very first citation. This changed from APA 6, where you listed everyone first and only shortened on the second citation – which is why so many templates online look wrong.
| Number of authors | In the text | In the reference list |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | (Andersson, 2021) | Andersson, K. (2021). |
| 2 | (Andersson & Lind, 2021) | Andersson, K., & Lind, P. (2021). |
| 3–20 | (Andersson et al., 2021) | All authors listed, with & before the last. |
| 21 or more | (Andersson et al., 2021) | The first 19, an ellipsis, then the very last author. |
How do you reference a book?
A book is referenced as surname, initial, year in brackets, title in italics with sentence-case capitalisation, and publisher. The publisher location was removed in APA 7.
Template: Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of the work (edition). Publisher.
Example: Dunlosky, J., & Metcalfe, J. (2009). Metacognition. Sage.
If the chapter has its own author, reference the chapter rather than the whole book: Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of the chapter. In B. B. Editor (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. 45–70). Publisher. Note that the chapter title is not italicised but the book title is.
How do you reference a journal article?
A journal article carries volume, issue and pages where a book carries a publisher, and ends with a DOI where one exists. The journal name and volume number are italicised; the article title is not.
Template: Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of the article. Journal Name, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/xxxxx
Example: Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35(6), 481–498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-007-9015-8
The DOI is written as a full link and never ends with a full stop – the stop tends to travel into the URL when somebody pastes it.
How do you reference a web page?
A web page is referenced with author or organisation, date, page title in italics, site name and URL. A retrieval date is used only when the content is designed to change over time, such as a statistics page that updates continuously.
Template: Organisation. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page. Site Name. URL
Example: Office for National Statistics. (2024, March 15). Labour market overview. ONS. https://www.ons.gov.uk/
With no date, write (n.d.). With no author, the title moves to the front of the entry and becomes what is alphabetised.
How do you reference AI-generated content?
APA 7 treats a chatbot as software, with the developer as author: OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (Jan 26 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/ But before referencing a model at all, check what your institution allows. Many modules permit AI as a writing aid but not as a source for factual claims, because a language model cannot be checked by a reader.
The more important rule holds regardless of system: any claim that carries weight in your text should be traceable to a source the reader can look up. We work through where the line sits in our article on the rules for using AI in your studies.
What does the reference list look like?
An APA reference list is alphabetised by the first author’s surname, uses a hanging indent on every entry and is headed "References". Several works by the same author are ordered chronologically, oldest first. Identical years are distinguished with a, b, c after the year: (Andersson, 2021a).
Every entry must have a counterpart in the text. A common reason for lost marks is a generous reference list full of sources never mentioned in the essay – it reads as literature that was collected rather than used.
Which mistakes cost the most marks?
Four errors recur in marker feedback. The first is mixed systems: an essay that starts in APA and drifts into Harvard or footnotes. The second is sources in the text missing from the list, which looks exactly like a plagiarism problem even when it is pure carelessness – we describe how the checking works in our article on plagiarism checkers.
The third is passing off a secondary source as primary: if you read Deci and Ryan inside somebody else’s textbook, that has to show. The fourth is a missing page number on a direct quotation, which in APA is mandatory rather than optional.
How to check your references before submitting
Work through the essay backwards, from the reference list into the text, ticking off each entry. This catches orphaned sources that a forward read misses, because reading forwards you follow the argument rather than the citations.
A second pass handles the details: ampersand inside brackets, full stop after the bracket and not before, italics on the right element, DOI with no trailing stop. If you upload your draft to Memmo you can ask the chat whether a given paragraph lacks a citation, since it reads what you actually wrote rather than a generic template.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between APA and Harvard?
APA is a published rulebook with one publisher and a current edition, while Harvard is an umbrella term for similar author–date systems that vary between institutions. In practice they differ in punctuation, italics and how editions are given – the underlying logic of surname and year in the text is the same.
Which APA edition should I use?
The seventh edition, in force since 2019, unless your module explicitly says otherwise. If a template lists a publisher location, or spells out every author on first citation, you are looking at APA 6 and it is out of date.
Do I need a page number when I paraphrase?
Page numbers are mandatory for direct quotations and strongly recommended for paraphrase. If you point to a specific argument inside a 400-page book without a page number, the reader has no practical way of checking you, which is the entire purpose of a citation.
How do I cite a source I only read about somewhere else?
Give the original followed by "as cited in" and the source you actually read: (Deci & Ryan, 1985, as cited in Andersson, 2021). Only the source you read, Andersson, goes in the reference list. If you can find the original, reading and citing it directly is always better.
Does a forgotten reference count as plagiarism?
A missing citation is judged on the pattern, not the single slip. One omission in an otherwise well-referenced essay is normally treated as a formatting error, whereas whole unreferenced paragraphs read as passing off somebody else’s work as your own and can go to an academic misconduct panel.