The reference list is where everything comes together. Every source you cited in your paper gets a full entry here — the author, date, title, and where to find the work — so your readers can track down anything that caught their interest.
Think of it as a contract with your reader: "Here's exactly where I got this information, and here's how you can verify it yourself."
Ground Rules
Before getting into the details of individual entries, here are the formatting rules that apply to the reference list as a whole:
- Start on a new page. Center the word References in bold at the top — don't resize it, bold it, or make it all caps beyond what APA's heading Level 1 requires.
- Double-space every entry, with no extra space between entries.
- Use a hanging indent — the first line of each entry sits flush against the left margin, and every subsequent line is indented 0.5 inches (1.27 cm). This is the opposite of a regular paragraph indent, and it's what makes reference lists visually scannable.
- Alphabetize entries by the first author's last name. If there's no author, alphabetize by the first meaningful word of the title (skip "A," "An," and "The").
- Only list sources you actually cited. The reference list is not a bibliography of everything you read — it's a one-to-one match with your in-text citations.
The Four Building Blocks
Every reference entry — whether it's a journal article, a book, or a TikTok video — is built from the same four elements, always in the same order:
Author. (Date). Title. Source.
Let's break each one down.
1. Author
The person or organization responsible for the work.
| Scenario | How to Format | Example |
|---|---|---|
| One author | Last name, First initial(s). | Garcia, M. L. |
| Two authors | Connect with & | Garcia, M. L., & Lee, J. |
| Three to twenty authors | List all, with & before the last | Garcia, M. L., Lee, J., & Park, S. |
| Twenty-one or more | First 19, then … then the last author | Garcia, M. L., Lee, J., … Zimmerman, T. |
| Group/organization | Full name | World Health Organization. |
| No author | Move the title into the author position | — |
Quick note on et al.:You never use "et al." in the reference list. That's only for in-text citations. In the reference list, you spell out every author's name (up to 20).
2. Date
When the work was published.
| Scenario | How to Format | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (most works) | Year in parentheses, followed by a period | (2023). |
| Exact date (magazine, newspaper, blog) | Year, Month Day | (2023, September 14). |
| No date available | Use n.d. | (n.d.). |
3. Title
The name of the work.
This is where many people trip up, because APA treats different types of works differently:
- Articles, chapters, and web pages — Use sentence case (capitalize only the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon). No italics, no quotation marks.
- Books, reports, dissertations, and films — Use sentence case and italicize the title.
- Edition or volume info follows the title in parentheses, not italicized:
(2nd ed.)or(Vol. 3).
What's sentence case?It means you capitalize the title as if it were a regular sentence: only the first word and any proper nouns. So a journal article title would be: Spaced retrieval practice in higher education: A meta-analysis — not Spaced Retrieval Practice in Higher Education: A Meta-Analysis.
4. Source
This tells the reader where to find the work. The format depends on the source type:
- Journal article: Journal Title in Title Case and Italics, volume(issue), page range. DOI
- Book: Publisher Name. DOI (if available)
- Edited book chapter: In E. Editor (Ed.), Book title (pp. xx–xx). Publisher. DOI
- Website: Site Name. URL
DOIs and URLs
This is one of the areas where the 7th edition simplified things significantly:
- Always include a DOI when one is available — even for works you accessed in print. Format it as a full URL:
https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000255 - Don't put a period after a DOI or URL. It could be mistaken as part of the link, and a reader who clicks a broken DOI link will not thank you.
- For online sources without a DOI, provide the direct URL.
- "Retrieved from" is gone for most sources. Just place the URL at the end. The one exception is content that changes over time (like a wiki article), where you include the retrieval date:
Retrieved January 5, 2025, from https://…
Common Reference Examples
Here are the most common source types you'll encounter, with a properly formatted example for each. Use these as templates when building your own reference list.
Journal Article
Garcia, M. L., & Lee, J. (2021). Spaced retrieval practice in higher education: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(4), 718–735. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000612
What to notice: Authors in last-name-first format, article title in sentence case (not italicized), journal name in title case and italicized, volume number italicized, issue number in parentheses (not italicized), page range, DOI as a full URL with no period after it.
For a complete guide covering DOIs, online-only articles, article numbers, advance online publications, and more, see How to Cite a Journal Article in APA Format.
Book
Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. Scribner.
What to notice: Book title is italicized and in sentence case. Publisher name follows — no city or state is needed (that was a 6th edition rule).
For a complete guide covering edited books, book chapters, e-books, translated books, and more, see How to Cite a Book in APA Format.
Edited Book Chapter
Sweller, J. (2011). Cognitive load theory. In J. P. Mestre & B. H. Ross (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 55, pp. 37–76). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-387691-1.00002-8
What to notice: The chapter title is not italicized. The book title is italicized. The editors' names appear in first-initial-last-name order (not inverted), preceded by "In".
Website Page
World Health Organization. (2024, March 1). Mental health: Strengthening our response. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response
What to notice: Group author written out in full. The title is italicized because it's a standalone web page. If the author and site name are the same, omit the site name to avoid repetition.
For a complete guide covering no-author websites, blog posts, Wikipedia, retrieval dates, and more, see How to Cite a Website in APA Format.
Conference Paper
Park, S., & Chen, Y. (2023, August 10–13). Adaptive learning algorithms for diverse classrooms [Paper presentation]. Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, United States.
What to notice: The date range of the conference is included. The contribution type is noted in square brackets.
Dissertation or Thesis
Rodriguez, A. L. (2022). Bilingual language development in early childhood: A longitudinal study [Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
What to notice: The type of dissertation and the institution go in square brackets. The database or archive name follows.
Social Media Post
National Geographic [@NatGeo]. (2024, February 12). The deepest cave in the world just got deeper [Instagram photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/example
What to notice: The account handle goes in square brackets after the name. The content type is also in square brackets. The platform name serves as the source.
When Information Is Missing
Real-world sources aren't always perfect. Here's what to do when a required element is missing — APA has a clear fallback for each situation:
| Missing Element | What to Do | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Move the title into the author position | Climate change and public health. (2022). … |
| Date | Use (n.d.) | Garcia, M. L. (n.d.). … |
| Title | Provide a description in square brackets | Garcia, M. L. (2023). [Untitled blog post]. … |
| DOI or URL | Simply omit it — no placeholder needed for print-only sources | — |
Alphabetizing: The Tricky Cases
Most of the time, alphabetizing is straightforward. But a few situations trip people up:
- Mc vs. Mac — Alphabetize them literally, letter by letter. "McDonald" comes before "MacNeil" because "Mc" precedes "Mac" when compared character by character.
- Numbers in titles — Treat the number as if it were spelled out. A work titled "4th wave feminism" files under F (fourth).
- Same first author, different works — Single-author entries come before multi-author entries. So Garcia (2021) appears before Garcia & Lee (2021). Among multi-author entries sharing the first author, sort by the second author's last name, then the third, and so on.
- Same author, same year — Append lowercase letters (a, b, c…) after the year: Garcia (2021a), Garcia (2021b). Assign the letters based on the alphabetical order of the titles.
Final Checklist
Before submitting your paper, walk through this list to catch the most common reference list errors:
- Every in-text citation has a corresponding reference list entry
- Every reference list entry has at least one in-text citation
- Entries are alphabetized by first author's last name (or by title if there's no author)
- Hanging indent is applied to all entries
- DOIs are present wherever available and formatted as
https://doi.org/… - No period follows a DOI or URL
- Journal titles and volume numbers are italicized
- Book and report titles are italicized and in sentence case
- Article and chapter titles are in sentence case but not italicized
- "Et al." does not appear anywhere in the reference list (spell out all author names)
Next Steps
Now that you know how to build a reference list, explore guides for specific source types:
- How to Cite a Book in APA Format — books, edited books, e-books, and book chapters
- How to Cite a Journal Article in APA Format — articles with DOIs, print-only articles, and online-only journals
- How to Cite a Website in APA Format — web pages, blog posts, and organizational sources
- How to Cite a Video in APA Format — YouTube videos, TED Talks, films, and other audiovisual media
- How to Cite Social Media in APA Format — tweets, Instagram posts, Facebook posts, and more
- How to Cite ChatGPT & AI-Generated Content in APA — citing output from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and other AI tools
- APA Annotated Bibliography — when your assignment requires annotations with each reference
Writing a thesis? See our Literature Review guide for how to synthesize sources and build the chapter that relies most heavily on your reference list.
Remember: nobody memorizes everything. Even experienced researchers look things up. The point is knowing what to look up and where to find it — and now you have a guide you can come back to anytime.
