APA 7th Edition Referencing: A Quick Guide for UK Students

APA style is the referencing system of the American Psychological Association. In the UK it is used mainly in psychology, education, nursing and allied health, social work and some business schools. The current version is the 7th edition, published in 2019, and it changed several rules that students still get wrong because older guides are everywhere online. This guide sets out the rules you need for an essay or dissertation, with example formats, and ends with the differences from Harvard, since many UK students switch between the two.

One caution before the detail: universities and even individual departments publish their own APA guides with small variations, for example on line spacing or on whether lecture slides may be cited. Where your handbook differs from this page, follow the handbook.

The two parts of APA referencing

APA is an author–date system. Every source you use appears twice: a short in-text citation at the point where you use it, and a full entry in the reference list at the end. The two must match: every in-text citation needs a reference-list entry, and every entry must be cited at least once in the text.

In-text citations

The basic forms

A parenthetical citation puts the author and year in brackets at the end of the sentence: (Hartley, 2021). A narrative citation makes the author part of the sentence: Hartley (2021) found that… Both are correct; vary them to keep the writing readable. Once you have named a source in a sentence, you do not need to repeat the year in later narrative citations in the same paragraph, but you do repeat it in brackets whenever the reader could be unsure which source you mean.

Number of authors

• One author: (Hartley, 2021).
• Two authors: use an ampersand in brackets, (Hartley & Okafor, 2021), and the word “and” in the sentence: Hartley and Okafor (2021).
• Three or more authors: give the first author followed by et al. from the very first citation: (Hartley et al., 2021). This is a 7th edition change; the 6th edition listed up to five authors the first time.
• Group author: spell the name out the first time with the abbreviation in square brackets, (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2022), then use the abbreviation: (NICE, 2022).

Page numbers and quotations

Direct quotations need a page number: (Hartley, 2021, p. 14) or, for a range, (pp. 14–15). For sources without pages, such as web pages, give a paragraph number, a section heading or a time stamp: (NICE, 2022, para. 3). APA encourages a page number for paraphrases too when it helps the reader find the passage, but it is not compulsory.

Other situations

• No author: use the first few words of the title in the author position, in italics for a stand-alone work (a report or book) and in double quotation marks for part of a work (an article or web page).
• No date: write n.d., as in (Hartley, n.d.).
• Several sources in one bracket: list them alphabetically and separate them with semicolons: (Adeyemi, 2019; Hartley, 2021; NICE, 2022).
• Same author, same year: add letters to the year in both the citation and the reference list: (Hartley, 2021a, 2021b).
• Secondary sources: if you read about Vygotsky’s work in Hartley’s book, cite it as (Vygotsky, 1978, as cited in Hartley, 2021) and list only Hartley in the reference list. Use this sparingly; markers prefer that you read the original.
• Personal communications (emails, interviews you conducted, lectures not available online) are cited in the text only: (R. Okafor, personal communication, March 3, 2024). They do not appear in the reference list.

The reference list

Formatting rules

• Start on a new page with the heading References, centred and in bold.
• Order entries alphabetically by the first author’s surname. Entries by the same first author go in date order, earliest first.
• Use a hanging indent: the first line of each entry sits at the margin and the following lines are indented.
• APA specifies double spacing; many UK departments accept the same spacing as the rest of the assignment, so check.
• List up to 20 authors in full. For 21 or more, give the first 19, an ellipsis, then the final author.
• Give DOIs as full links in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx. Do not write “doi:” or “Retrieved from” in front of a link.
• Do not include the publisher’s location. The 6th edition required a city; the 7th edition removed it.
• Use sentence case for article, chapter, book and report titles (capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns). Use title case and italics for journal names, and italics for volume numbers.
• Only add a retrieval date for pages that are designed to change over time, such as a live statistics dashboard.
• Dates follow the APA order of year, month and day, as in (2023, September 14); some UK handbooks accept day–month order, so check yours.

Example formats

The names and titles below are illustrative examples to show the pattern, not real sources. Replace them with your own.

• Journal article with a DOI: Hartley, L., & Okafor, D. (2021). Peer feedback in first-year nursing education. Journal of Practice Education, 52(4), 115–123. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx
• Journal article without a DOI: Adeyemi, F. (2019). Reflective practice and placement confidence. Journal of Practice Learning, 18(2), 41–57.
• Book: Carter, M. (2020). Research methods for health students (3rd ed.). Example University Press.
• Chapter in an edited book: Singh, P. (2018). Working with families. In J. Moore & K. Wallace (Eds.), Foundations of social work practice (pp. 88–104). Example Press.
• Report by an organisation (real example): National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2022). Depression in adults: Treatment and management (NICE Guideline NG222). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng222
• Web page with an organisation as author and no date: NHS. (n.d.). Overview: Type 2 diabetes. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/type-2-diabetes/
• Online newspaper article: Reeves, T. (2023, September 14). Universities rethink group assessment. The Example Times. URL
• Dissertation or thesis: Mensah, A. (2021). Student nurses’ experiences of night shifts [Master’s dissertation, University of Example]. Repository name. URL
• Lecture slides: Okafor, D. (2024). Week 3: Attachment theory [Lecture slides]. Moodle. URL — only where your programme allows lecture material to be cited; some ask you to cite the original sources instead.
• Video: Channel name. (2022, May 5). Title of video [Video]. YouTube. URL
• UK legislation: APA defers to local legal citation practice. UK Acts are cited by short title and year, with the chapter number in the reference list, for example: Equality Act 2010, c. 15. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15
• Generative AI tools: APA’s 2023 guidance treats the developer as the author and the tool as the title: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Version 4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/ — and asks you to describe in the text how the tool was used. Check your university’s academic integrity policy first; many UK universities restrict or prohibit AI use in assessed work.

APA and Harvard: the differences that cause most errors

• APA uses an ampersand (&) between authors in brackets and in the reference list; Harvard usually uses “and”.
• APA uses et al. from three authors onwards in every citation; many Harvard variants list up to three authors.
• APA puts the year in brackets in the reference list, (2021), and places a comma between author and year in citations; Harvard generally does neither.
• APA gives DOIs as https links and never writes “Available at”; Harvard variants vary.
• APA uses sentence case for titles; some Harvard variants use title case.
• APA writes n.d. for no date; Harvard variants often write “no date”.

Common APA 7 mistakes

• Listing all authors in the text for a three-author source (a 6th edition habit).
• Including the publisher city.
• Writing “Retrieved from” before every URL.
• Using title case for article titles.
• Putting personal communications in the reference list.
• Mismatches between citations and the list: a different year, a misspelt surname, or a cited source missing from the list.
• Trusting a citation generator without checking the output against these rules. Generators frequently produce 6th edition formats or invent a DOI.

Quick checklist before you submit

• Every in-text citation has a matching reference and the years agree.
• Three or more authors are shortened to et al. everywhere.
• Direct quotations have page or paragraph numbers.
• The reference list is alphabetical with hanging indents.
• DOIs are full https links; no “doi:” and no “Retrieved from”.
• No publisher locations.
• Titles are in sentence case; journal names and volume numbers are in italics.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a reference list and a bibliography?

APA uses a reference list only, containing the sources you cited. A bibliography of background reading is not part of APA; include one only if your module asks for it.

How do I cite a source I accessed through my university library?

Cite it as you would the original. Do not include the database name or the library’s proxy link unless the work is only available from that database.

What if a journal article has an article number instead of page numbers?

Give the article number where the pages would go, for example 58(3), Article e01234.

Can I cite Wikipedia?

Technically yes, but most UK markers expect you to follow its sources to the original material and cite that instead.

Further reading

• American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
• APA Style. (n.d.). Style and grammar guidelines. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines