Two halves that must always match

APA 7th referencing has two halves: a short in-text citation carrying the author and year, and a full entry in an alphabetical reference list at the end. Get those two talking to each other and you have solved most of what markers actually check.

For international students at UK and Australian universities, clean referencing is some of the easiest marks to earn and the easiest to lose. Markers use it as a proxy for academic care, and reference errors are a common trigger for academic-integrity queries even when the work is entirely your own.

When you use APA 7th

APA 7th is the referencing style of the American Psychological Association, used widely in psychology, education, nursing, business and the social sciences. You use it when your unit guide or assignment brief specifies APA, and you should confirm the required style in your own course shell before you start. The seventh edition simplified several rules from the sixth, including dropping the publisher location and allowing up to 20 authors before an ellipsis in a reference entry. Copying templates from older web pages is a common source of avoidable errors, because much of what circulates online is still APA 6th.

In-text citations

An APA in-text citation gives the author surname and the year, either in parentheses at the end of the sentence or woven into the running text. When you quote directly, add the page number.

• One author: at the end of a sentence as (Author, 2021), or in the running text as Author (2021) argues.
• Direct quotation: add the page, as (Author, 2021, p. 14).
• Two authors: name both every time, joined by an ampersand inside parentheses and by "and" in the running text.
• Three or more authors: give the first author followed by "et al." from the very first citation. This is a change from older habits many students still carry, and the full stop belongs after "al", not after "et".

Building a reference list entry

Every entry follows the same order: author, year, title, source. The list is alphabetical by author surname, double-spaced in a real assignment, with a hanging indent so the first line sits to the left and the rest indent.

A journal article reads: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the article. Title of the Journal, volume(issue), pages, followed by the DOI. A book reads: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the book (edition). Publisher.

The rule that carries the most weight is reciprocal: every source named in your text must appear in the list, and every entry in the list must be cited in the text. A list with more entries than citations reads to a marker as padding.

Missing author, missing date

With no author, move the title into the author position and cite a shortened title in text. With no date, use "n.d." in place of the year, in both the in-text citation and the reference entry. For an organisation as author, use the full name.

A frequent error is citing a webpage by the date you accessed it. If the page shows no publication date, the correct form is "n.d." with a retrieval date, and the distinction matters to a marker checking source quality.

Citing generative AI tools

APA treats a generative AI tool as a software source: name the company as author, give the model and year, describe the tool in brackets as a large language model, and report the prompt in your text or an appendix. Describe how you used it in the methods section or a note.

One caution matters more than the format. Referencing an AI tool does not make undisclosed or prohibited use acceptable. Check whether your university permits AI use for the task first, and disclose it as your institution requires. The disclosure rules of your unit always come before the citation format.

The recurring mistakes

• In-text citations that do not match the reference list. Because APA is an author-date system, this is the single most damaging error.
• Mixing APA 6th and 7th rules, usually from old templates.
• Missing or misplaced "et al." punctuation.
• Inconsistent capitalisation and italics across entries.

Each is small on its own, but together they read as carelessness. A broken or missing reference can escalate from a formatting deduction to an integrity query even when the work is genuinely yours, because markers and integrity processes both check that every cited source is real and traceable. A one-page personal checklist of your own recurring errors, run before every submission, tends to stop the deductions faster than reading the manual again.

Read the full lesson

This unit is a condensed version. The full lesson, with worked examples and the source list, is published open access by MAAS Education Technology JSC: How do you reference correctly in APA 7th edition?

A citable snapshot with a permanent DOI is archived on Zenodo: 10.5281/zenodo.22293044.

Licence: CC BY 4.0. Generative AI tools assisted with drafting and structuring the text, subject matter, worked examples and sources were directed by MAAS Education Technology JSC, and the final text was reviewed and approved by MAAS editors before publication.