APA referencing, 7th edition

APA style comes from the American Psychological Association. It’s used in psychology, nursing, education and many social sciences, in the UK and around the world. This guide follows the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020). The reference examples are KanBananza’s own output, so you can check yours against them.

APA is an author-date style. In your writing, you give the author and the year. At the end, a reference list gives the full details, so a reader can find each source.

In-text citations

There are two ways to cite in APA. A parenthetical citation puts the author and the year in brackets, usually at the end of a sentence. A narrative citation puts the author’s name in your sentence, with the year in brackets straight after it. Most essays use both.

Two authors: “&” or “and”

Inside brackets, join two authors with an ampersand (&): (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In your own sentence, write “and”: Braun and Clarke (2006). Name both authors every time.

Three or more authors: et al. from the start

For three or more authors, give the first author’s surname and “et al.” every time, including the first: (Kahneman et al., 2004). This changed in the 7th edition: APA 6 named up to five authors the first time. “Et al.” means “and others”, and only “al.” has a full stop. The reference list still names every author, up to 20.

Organisations as authors

When an organisation wrote the work, its name goes where a person’s would. Write it in full: (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2019). If the name is long and has a well-known short form, you can give the short form in square brackets the first time, then use it on its own after that. The reference list always uses the full name. KanBananza’s citation gives the full name, so add a short form yourself if you want one.

No date or no author

If a source has no date, write “n.d.” (no date) where the year would go: (McLeod, n.d.). Look for a date near the title first, because many web pages have one.

If no person is named, check whether an organisation is the author. If there’s really no author, the title takes the author’s place. In the text, write the title in title case (a capital for each main word). Put it in italics if it’s in italics in your reference list, or in “quotation marks” if it isn’t.

Page numbers and quotes

Every direct quote needs a page number: “p.” for one page and “pp.” for more than one. For a paraphrase, APA doesn’t require a page number, but you can add one when it would help the reader find the passage, such as in a long book. If your source has no page numbers, like most web pages, give the paragraph number instead, as in (Surname, 2024, para. 4), or the name of the section.

Two or more sources at once

Put them in one pair of brackets, in the same A to Z order as your reference list, with semicolons between them: (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Kahneman, 2011; Miller, 1956).

A source you read about in another one

Say you read about Baddeley and Hitch’s working memory model on McLeod’s web page, but didn’t read their 1974 chapter yourself. Name the original, then add “as cited in” and the source you read: (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, as cited in McLeod, n.d.). Only McLeod goes in your reference list, because that’s the one you read. APA asks you to do this sparingly: when you can, find and read the original.

The reference list

The reference list starts on a new page at the end of your work, with the heading References, in bold and centred. It lists every source you cited, and only those. Each entry gives the same four things in the same order: who wrote it, when, what it’s called, and where to find it.

• Order: A to Z by the first author’s surname. An organisation goes under the first main word of its name. A work with no author goes under the first main word of its title (skip “A”, “An” and “The”).
• Layout: double line spacing, and a hanging indent of 1.27 cm (0.5 inch). The first line of each entry starts at the margin, and the lines after it are indented.
• Authors: surname, then initials: Kahneman, D. Put “&” before the last author. Name up to 20 authors. For 21 or more, give the first 19, then three dots (…), then the last author.
• Dates: the year in brackets after the authors: (2011). For news articles and web pages, add the month and day: (2024, March 5). With no date, write (n.d.).
• Capital letters: titles of books, articles, chapters and web pages are in sentence case. That means capitals only for the first word, the first word after a colon, and names. Journal names keep their capitals, as in Psychological Review.
• Italics: titles of books, reports, web pages, videos and theses; the names of journals and newspapers; and journal volume numbers. Article and chapter titles aren’t in italics, and nor are issue numbers.
• DOIs and links: write a DOI as a link starting https://doi.org/. Don’t put a full stop after a DOI or a web address.
• Publishers: give the publisher’s name, but not the city. Leave the publisher out when it’s the same as the author.

In APA, KanBananza prints a title the way you typed it, so type titles in sentence case. Tidy with Pip can fix the capital letters for you, and shows each change first.

Retrieval dates

Most online sources don’t need the date you looked at them. APA 7 adds “Retrieved [date], from” before the link only for pages that are designed to change over time and aren’t archived. KanBananza treats a web page with no date as one that can change: it adds the date you accessed the page, as in the McLeod example below. A page with its own date doesn’t get one.

UK Acts and cases

APA’s own formats for laws and cases are for US law. For laws and cases from other countries, APA says to follow that country’s own legal citation conventions. So KanBananza keeps the UK citation: an Act’s chapter number, or a case’s law report or neutral citation. If you study law, check your course handbook: most UK law schools use OSCOLA instead of APA.

Examples for each kind of source

Each card has a pattern to follow, a real example where there’s one, and the in-text citation.

A full reference list

This is what KanBananza copies for five of the sources on this page, in APA’s A to Z order. Paste it into Word or Google Docs and the italics and hanging indents come with it. Then set the line spacing to double.

• Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Allen Lane.
• McLeod, S. (n.d.). Working memory model. Simply Psychology. Retrieved October 20, 2026, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/working-memory.html
• Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043158
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2019). Hypertension in adults: Diagnosis and management (NICE Guideline No. NG136). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng136

To build a list like this while you read, not the night before the deadline, see how to reference as you go. To keep track of which sources each part of your work uses, see how to track sources in each chapter.

Common mistakes

• “and” in brackets, or “&” in a sentence. It’s (Braun & Clarke, 2006), but Braun and Clarke (2006).
• Naming three or more authors in the text. APA 7 uses et al. from the first citation. It’s “et al.”, not “et. al”.
• Adding the publisher’s city. That was APA 6. APA 7 gives the publisher’s name only.
• “Retrieved from” before every link, or “doi:” before a DOI. APA 7 writes DOIs as https://doi.org/ links, and uses “Retrieved” only with a retrieval date.
• Title case for book and article titles. APA uses sentence case. Only journal names keep a capital for each main word.
• No page number for a quote. Every direct quote needs one.
• Listing a source you didn’t read. If you only read about it somewhere else, use “as cited in”, and list the source you read.
• Single spacing, or no hanging indent, in the reference list.