APA 7 Referencing Guide for UK Students

What changed in APA 7?

APA is an author and date system. Every source you use appears twice: once as a short in-text citation inside your writing, and once as a full entry in an alphabetical reference list at the end. Get those two halves to match, and most of your referencing marks look after themselves.

The seventh edition, published in 2019, tidied up several rules that used to trip students up. If a marker refers to 'APA style' without a number, UK departments almost always mean the seventh edition now.

• Three or more authors now use 'et al.' from the very first citation, rather than being spelled out on first mention.
• Reference list entries list up to 20 authors before you shorten; in the sixth edition the cut-off was seven.
• Book references no longer include the publisher's city or location.
• DOIs are written as full web links, and the old 'doi:' label and 'Retrieved from' wording are gone for most sources.
• The style now supports the singular 'they' and gives much fuller guidance on bias-free language.

APA 7 in-text citations

An APA 7 in-text citation gives the author's surname and the year of publication, and you can present it in two ways that good academic writing usually mixes.

Parenthetical: the citation sits in brackets at the end of the sentence, for example: cognitive load rises sharply when learners are asked to hold too many items at once (Patel, 2021).

Narrative: the author's name becomes part of your sentence, with only the year in brackets, for example: Patel (2021) found that cognitive load rises sharply under those conditions.

Use a page number when you quote directly or point to a specific passage: (Patel, 2021, p. 14) for one page, or (pp. 14-15) for a range. Keep a short quotation of fewer than 40 words inside quotation marks; set a quotation of 40 words or more as an indented block with no quotation marks, placing the citation after the closing full stop.

No author or no date. When a source has no named author, move the title into the author position and use a shortened version in your citation, italicising a standalone work such as a report or using quotation marks for an article or page: ('Referencing Basics,' 2022). When there is no date, use 'n.d.' in its place: (Author, n.d.).

Citing more than one source at once. List several sources in one set of brackets in alphabetical order, separated by semicolons: (Brown, 2019; Patel, 2021; Smith, 2020). This keeps a densely cited paragraph readable, which matters in evidence-heavy work such as a literature review.

Citing multiple authors

The number of authors changes how you write both the in-text citation and the reference list entry. This is where most marks are quietly lost, so keep this breakdown to hand.

One catch: the ampersand ('&') is used inside brackets, but you write 'and' in full when the authors' names run on inside your own sentence.

• One author: in text (Smith, 2020); the reference list names the author.
• Two authors: in text (Smith & Jones, 2020), or Smith and Jones (2020) in narrative form; the reference list names both, separated by '&'.
• Three or more: (Smith et al., 2020) from the first citation onwards; the reference list names all authors up to 20.
• 21 or more: (Smith et al., 2020) in text; the reference list names the first 19, adds an ellipsis (...), then the final author.
• Group or organisation: spell out in full on first use with an abbreviation in brackets, then use the abbreviation: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020), then (WHO, 2020); the reference list gives the full organisation name.

Secondary citations

A secondary citation is when you cite a source that you have only read about in another source. This happens often with older or foundational studies you cannot access directly.

Name the original work in your sentence, then cite the source you actually read using 'as cited in': classical conditioning was first demonstrated in this setting (Pavlov, 1927, as cited in Patel, 2021).

Only the source you read, Patel (2021), goes in your reference list; Pavlov does not, because you did not read Pavlov. Markers expect you to keep secondary citations to a minimum, so track down and read the original wherever you reasonably can. In psychology in particular, tutors notice when a whole essay leans on textbooks rather than primary studies.

Building your APA reference list

The APA reference list is the full record of every source you cited. Set it out on a new page under the heading References, centred and in bold, then apply four rules.

• Order entries alphabetically by the first author's surname.
• Give each entry a hanging indent, so the first line sits flush left and every following line is indented.
• Double-space the whole list.
• Present DOIs and URLs as live hyperlinks.

Reference examples: journals, books and websites

Journal article. Format: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), page-page. https://doi.org/xxxx. Example: Patel, R., & Osei, D. (2021). Working memory training and academic outcomes in adolescents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(4), 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000512. The article title is in sentence case, while the journal name and volume number are italicised, and the issue number sits in brackets without italics.

DOIs and URLs. A DOI is a permanent link to a source, written in APA 7 as a full web address in the form https://doi.org/ followed by the DOI string. Do not add the label 'doi:' and do not add 'Retrieved from'. If a journal article has no DOI and you read it through a library database, you usually give nothing further, since the database is not part of the reference.

Book and edited chapter. Book: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the book (edition). Publisher. Example: Kessler, M. (2018). Foundations of clinical psychology (2nd ed.). Routledge. Chapter: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the chapter. In E. Editor (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. 88-110). Publisher. APA 7 no longer asks for the publisher's location, so 'London: Sage' becomes simply 'Sage'.

Website. With an author and date: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page. Site Name. URL. Example: Willingham, D. (2022, March 8). How memory works. Learning Scientists. learningscientists.org/how-memory-works. When there is no individual author, the organisation moves into the author position; when there is no date, use (n.d.). Add a retrieval date only for pages designed to change that are not archived, in the form: Retrieved September 3, 2026, from URL.

Reports and the DSM. Report: British Psychological Society. (2021). Guidelines for the use of psychometric tests. www.bps.org.uk. The DSM: American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787. Spell out 'American Psychiatric Association' in full rather than abbreviating it to APA, so your reader does not confuse the publisher with the referencing style.

Tables and figures in APA 7

Tables and figures follow their own layout, and you cite them in the text by number, never as 'the table below'.

For a table, place the word Table and its number in bold on one line, the title in italics and title case on the next line, then the table itself, with any notes underneath opening with the italicised word Note. A figure (charts, graphs, diagrams and images) follows the same pattern: Figure and its number in bold, an italic title, the image, then a note if needed.

If you reproduce or adapt a table or figure from a published source, add a copyright attribution in the note and include the original in your reference list. Refer to it in your writing as, for example, 'as shown in Figure 2', so the reader can find it regardless of where it lands on the page.

APA 7 examples for psychology and social science students

A few worked situations come up again and again in psychology, nursing, education and social work assignments.

A single study, cited narratively: Osei and Lindqvist (2020) reported a moderate effect of sleep restriction on attention.

A meta-analysis with several authors: recent syntheses point the same way (Hassan et al., 2021).

A classic study read through a textbook: (Bandura, 1977, as cited in Kessler, 2018), with only Kessler in the reference list.

A dataset or measure: name the instrument in your method section and reference the source that documents it, treating it like a report or article.

These examples cover most of what an undergraduate essay or report needs; postgraduate work applies the same rules across many more sources, which is why a long thesis reference list rewards a careful final pass. If you want a second set of eyes on a completed piece, our proofreading and editing service checks that every in-text citation has a matching reference and that your formatting is consistent.

Common APA 7 mistakes to avoid

A referencing-heavy assignment, such as a dissertation, is where these slips multiply. If you are building a large project from the ground up, our dissertation writing support helps you keep your sources organised from the first chapter, and essay writing help does the same for shorter pieces. The slips to watch for:

• Spelling out three or more authors on first mention; in APA 7 you use 'et al.' straight away.
• Using 'and' inside brackets; it should be '&' in brackets and 'and' in your sentence.
• Leaving DOIs off journal articles, or keeping the old 'doi:' prefix.
• Listing a secondary source in the reference list when you only read about it elsewhere.
• Losing the hanging indent, or single-spacing the reference list.
• Mixing APA with Harvard by pasting references from different databases without checking; pick one style and apply it consistently.