APA 7th Edition Referencing Guide

Make Sure You’re Actually Using the 7th Edition

This matters more than people think. A lot of the guidance floating around online is still written for the 6th edition, and the two disagree on some fairly basic things — the biggest being when you’re allowed to write “et al.” That single difference is probably the most common reason students lose easy marks: they copied a rule from an old PDF their sibling used five years ago.

You’ll meet APA mainly in psychology, nursing, health sciences and a good chunk of education and social science work. If your course hasn’t told you which edition, ask — don’t assume.

The Rules for Citing In Text

One author: (Taylor, 2021), or Taylor (2021) found that…

Two authors: Use “&” in brackets, “and” in your sentence: (Taylor & Ahmed, 2021) / Taylor and Ahmed (2021) explain…

Three or more: “et al.” from the very first mention — no listing everyone out first like APA 6th allowed: (Taylor et al., 2021).

An organisation as the author: (World Health Organization, 2022). Spell it out in full once before you start abbreviating.

Quoting a specific passage: Add the page: (Taylor, 2021, p. 84).

Reference List Layout

Two habits worth building early: use the DOI whenever one exists (it’s the most stable way to point back to a source), and keep article/webpage titles in sentence case while journal and book names stay in title case and italics. Mixing those two up is one of the fastest ways to look inconsistent across a reference list.

APA’s Problem Cases

• No author listed? The title takes the author’s place: (“Title of Work,” 2021).
• No date? (n.d.) – and stay consistent with it for that specific source throughout.
• Two works, same author, same year? Add a/b/c and make sure the letters match between your in-text citations and your reference list.
• You found a quote inside someone else’s book? Cite it as (as cited in Author, Year), and only the book you actually read goes in your reference list.
• Citing something AI-generated? APA does have a rule for this — treat the tool as the author and note which version you used. That’s separate from whether your course actually allows AI use in the first place, which is its own question worth checking with your tutor.

A Checklist Worth Saving

• Three-plus authors use “et al.” from the first citation, not just later ones
• Every reference entry has the year immediately after the author
• Article and webpage titles are sentence case; journal and book titles are title case and italicised
• DOIs are formatted as clickable links, not old “doi:” prefixes
• Same-author, same-year entries carry matching a/b/c letters everywhere

Where the Marks Actually Get Lost

Four patterns come up again and again: writing “et al.” too soon (or too late) because of outdated guidance, burying the year somewhere other than right after the author, mixing sentence case and title case, and formatting DOIs as raw text instead of proper links.

One area students often overlook is how to cite a journal article correctly in APA. Small formatting details like italics, volume numbers, and DOI placement are easy to misapply, which is why many turn to assignment help when checking their reference list against APA 7th rules.

APA Next to the Other Styles

Both look almost identical to Harvard at a glance – the differences show up in the small formatting choices, which is exactly where students mix the two up. See the Harvard guide and MLA guide if you want the side-by-side.