APA Referencing Made Easy: Everything you Need to Know APA 7th edition, by Smart Student on YouTube. 23 min 5 s.
- Video length
- 23 min 5 s
- Time to do it
- 20 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 10
What you need
Steps
Sort your sources by type first: webpage, magazine article, or journal article. The type decides which formatting pattern you use and where the italics go.
Write down the four elements for every source: author, date, title, and source. Missing any one of these makes the reference incomplete.
Format author names as surname first, then initials, with an ampersand before the last name. List up to 20 authors in full.
For 21 or more authors, list the first 19, add an ellipsis, then the final author's name. Never shorten the list any other way.
Put the date in round brackets after the authors, like (2022) or (2022, August 30) for a webpage. Use (n.d.) when no date is shown.
Set the title in sentence case: capitalise only the first word, proper nouns and the first word after a colon.
For a webpage, write the author, date, page title in italics, the site name, then the URL. Leave the site name in plain text.
For a journal article, write the author, year, article title in plain text, then the journal name and volume in italics, the issue in brackets, page range and DOI.
List references alphabetically by first author surname, apply a hanging indent, and double space the list.
Check every in-text citation has a matching entry in the reference list, and every entry is cited in your text.
Tips and common mistakes
Write the DOI as a full link starting with https://doi.org/ rather than just the number.
Italicise only the journal name and volume, never the article title.
Use "&" in the reference list and inside brackets, but "and" in narrative text.
Treat an organisation as a group author and give the full name, not an abbreviation, in the reference list.
Questions
What do I do when a source has no date?
Put (n.d.) where the year would go. If the author is also missing, move the title into the author position.
Should I include the database name or the URL for a journal article?
Give the DOI when one exists. If there is no DOI and the article is from an academic database, you normally leave out the database name and URL.
How many authors do I list before using et al. in the text?
In APA 7, use the first author plus et al. for three or more authors from the first citation onward. The reference list still shows up to 20 names.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
