About APA Style
There are two parts to referencing: the citations within the text of your paper and the reference list at the end of your paper.
The American Psychological Association's (APA) referencing style is an "author-date" style, so the citation in the text consists of the author(s) and the year of publication given wholly or partly in round brackets.
Use only the surname of the author(s) followed by a comma and the year of publication. Include page, chapter or section numbers if you need to be specific, for example if you are quoting, paraphrasing or summarising:
No distinction is made between books, journal articles, internet documents or other formats except for electronic documents that do not provide page numbers. In this case use the paragraph number, if available, with the abbreviation para.
The full details of the source are given in a reference list at the end of the document:
Reference list entries contain all the information that is required to follow up your source. Reference lists in APA are arranged alphabetically by author.
See Reference List Entries or All Examples for details on how to construct references for specific resources such as books, journals and web pages.
Important Information
Created February 2010; modified January 2020; February 2023
Please remember to check with your unit co-ordinator or tutor before submitting your assignments, as their style preference may vary from the guidelines presented here.
When using EndNote referencing software, please use the following output style - APA 7th. Depending on which version of EndNote you are using, you may need to download this output style template. For information about EndNote and downloading output style templates, please see the EndNote Guide.
Acknowledgement
This referencing guide follows the principles and examples given in the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020).
For more detailed referencing examples, see: