APA Referencing: A Complete UK Student Guide (2026)

APA referencing is the author–date citation style of the American Psychological Association, now in its 7th edition. You cite sources in the text with the author surname and year, such as (Smith, 2020), and list full details alphabetically on a References page at the end. UK courses in psychology, education, nursing and the social sciences use APA referencing as standard.

The Short Answer

APA is an author–date referencing system. In the text you give the author surname and year of publication, adding a page number for direct quotations, and at the end you provide a single alphabetical list headed References containing full details of every source you cited. A reference entry follows a fixed order — author, date, title, source — with the reference list double-spaced and each entry given a hanging indent. Getting APA right is mostly a matter of applying that one pattern consistently rather than memorising dozens of separate rules.

Key takeaways

• APA stands for the American Psychological Association; the current version is APA 7.
• In-text citations are author–date: (Smith, 2020) or Smith (2020).
• Add a page number for direct quotes: (Smith, 2020, p. 15).
• Full sources go on a References page, alphabetical with a hanging indent.
• Use an ampersand (&) before the last author inside brackets.

What is APA referencing?

APA referencing is the author–date system created by the American Psychological Association for the social and behavioural sciences. It links a short in-text citation to a full entry on the References page so readers can find each source. Its emphasis on the year of publication suits subjects where recency of evidence matters.

How do APA in-text citations work?

Give the author surname and year. Use brackets when the citation is not part of the sentence: (Brown, 2021). When you name the author, put only the year in brackets: Brown (2021). For a direct quote, add the page: (Brown, 2021, p. 42). For two authors use & in brackets; for three or more use the first author plus “et al.”

How do you format an APA References entry?

• Journal article: Smith, J. (2020). Memory and learning. Journal of Psychology, 45(2), 110–125. https://doi.org/10.xxxx
• Book: Brown, A. (2019). Educational theory (3rd ed.). Routledge.
• Website: NHS. (2023, March 4). Mental health. https://www.nhs.uk

Quick APA referencing examples

APA References vs bibliography: what is the difference?

APA uses a References page that lists only the sources you cited in the text. A bibliography may also include background reading. Unless your tutor asks for an annotated bibliography, use a References page in APA.

Formatting an APA Paper: Title Page, Headings and Spacing

APA is a complete document style, not just a way of formatting citations, and UK markers who ask for APA often expect the layout conventions too. A student paper title page carries the title in bold title case positioned in the upper half of the page, your name, your department and institution, the module name and number, the tutor’s name and the due date, each on its own line and centred. Professional papers add a running head; student papers usually do not need one, though page numbers in the top right are standard.

The body is double-spaced throughout, including the reference list and any block quotations, with one-inch or 2.54 centimetre margins, a legible font used consistently, and the first line of every paragraph indented. Headings run through five levels, each with its own prescribed formatting: level one centred and bold, level two flush left and bold, level three flush left, bold and italic, and levels four and five indented and run into the paragraph. You use them in order and you never skip a level.

Where your department’s own submission template conflicts with APA — single spacing, a specified font, an institutional cover sheet — follow the department. Local formatting instructions always take precedence over the published style manual, and markers will not penalise you for obeying the brief. What they will penalise is inconsistency, so decide once and apply it everywhere.

Reference Entries for the Source Types UK Students Use Most

Every APA reference answers four questions in the same order: who, when, what and where. Once you internalise that pattern you can construct an entry for almost anything. A journal article gives author surname and initials, the year in brackets, the article title in sentence case, the journal name in italics, the volume in italics with the issue in brackets, the page range, and a DOI presented as a full link. A book gives author, year, italicised title in sentence case, edition in brackets where relevant, and publisher — APA 7 no longer requires the place of publication.

The entries students most often get wrong are the composite ones. An edited book chapter needs the chapter author first, then the chapter title in plain text, then the word In, the editors’ initials before their surnames, the book title in italics, the page range in brackets, and the publisher. A report from a government department or charity treats the organisation as the author and, where the publisher is the same organisation, does not repeat it. A thesis or dissertation is identified in brackets as such along with the awarding institution, and where you accessed it through a repository, the repository is named.

Web material and grey literature cause most of the remaining difficulty, largely because students record too little at the point of reading. Capture the author or organisation, the date the specific page was published or last updated, the page title, the site name, and the address before you close the tab. Our step-by-step walkthroughs for websites, PDFs and books set out the field order for each case.

Multiple Authors, et al. and Repeated Citations

APA 7 simplified the rules for multiple authors considerably, and many students are still working from older habits. For a work with one or two authors, name both every time you cite it. For a work with three or more authors, use the first author’s surname followed by et al. from the very first citation onwards — there is no longer a rule requiring all names on first mention. In the reference list, list up to twenty authors in full; with twenty-one or more, give the first nineteen, then an ellipsis, then the final author.

Ampersands follow a strict split. Inside brackets you use an ampersand between the last two authors; in running text you write the word and. So a parenthetical citation reads as two surnames joined by an ampersand with the year, while a narrative sentence names the same authors joined by and with the year in brackets immediately after. Getting this backwards is one of the fastest ways to signal that a paper was formatted carelessly.

Where two different sources would shorten to the same et al. form, APA asks you to include as many surnames as are needed to distinguish them, followed by et al. And where you cite several works at once, order them alphabetically inside a single set of brackets separated by semicolons, rather than stacking separate brackets. Two works by the same author in the same year are distinguished by lower-case letters after the year, applied identically in the text and in the reference list.

Quotations, Page Numbers and Block Quotes in APA

APA expects a page number, or an equivalent locator, whenever you quote directly. For a short quotation of fewer than forty words, keep it in your sentence inside double quotation marks and place the author, year and page in brackets. Where the source has no page numbers — a web page, an ebook without stable pagination, a video — use a paragraph number, a section heading, or a timestamp so a reader can locate the words.

Quotations of forty words or more are set as block quotations: no quotation marks, the whole quotation indented from the left margin, still double-spaced, with the citation in brackets after the closing punctuation. Because a block quotation occupies a lot of a limited word count and demonstrates nothing about your own reasoning, use it sparingly and only where the exact wording matters — a definition, a statute, a distinctive formulation.

For paraphrases, APA does not require a page number but strongly encourages one when you are pointing to a specific passage in a long work, and many UK markers expect it. The wider principle is that a reader should be able to check any claim you attribute to a source without reading the whole thing. If you are unsure how much to quote against how much to paraphrase, our guide to citing sources works through the balance.

Common APA referencing mistakes to avoid

• Writing “and” instead of “&” inside brackets.
• Omitting the year, which is essential in author–date styles.
• Listing all authors when three or more should be “et al.” in text.
• Calling the list a “Bibliography” instead of “References”.

For broader help, see our guides on how to write an essay and how to write coursework, and the official rules at APA Style. For hands-on support, Projectsdeal offers an essay writing service, psychology assignment help and a dissertation editing service.

Narrative vs Parenthetical Citations in APA

APA gives you two ways to cite in-text, and using both makes your writing flow better. A parenthetical citation places author and year in brackets at the end of a sentence: (Smith, 2024). A narrative citation weaves the author into your sentence, with the year in brackets straight after the name: “Smith (2024) argues that…” Use narrative citations when the author or study is the focus of your point, and parenthetical ones when the idea matters more than who said it. For a direct quotation, add the page number in both styles, for example (Smith, 2024, p. 15).

Which Subjects Use APA in UK Universities?

APA is the house style for the social and behavioural sciences, so you are most likely to meet it in psychology, education, nursing and health sciences, sociology and many business and management courses. Other disciplines have their own conventions — law uses OSCOLA, many humanities subjects use MHRA or MLA, and the sciences often use Vancouver — so always confirm the required style in your module handbook before you start.

APA 6 or APA 7? Choosing Your Edition

APA 7, published in 2019, is now the current edition and the one most UK universities expect, though some departments still reference APA 6 in older handbooks. The differences affect in-text citations for three or more authors, the removal of the publisher location, and how DOIs are presented, among other changes. Confirm which edition your course requires, and if it is the latest version, see our dedicated How to Reference APA 7 guide for the full set of updated rules and examples. When in doubt, apply APA 7 and stay consistent throughout your work.

Missing Authors, Missing Dates and Secondary Sources

When no individual author is named, look for a corporate author before anything else: a department, an agency, a company, a professional body. Use the full name on first citation and, if it has a widely recognised abbreviation, introduce the abbreviation in square brackets and use it thereafter. Only when no author of any kind can be identified do you move the title into the author position, shortening it in the in-text citation and italicising or quoting it according to the source type.

When no date is available, write n.d. in place of the year both in the text and in the reference list. Do not substitute the date you accessed the page for the date it was published; APA only asks for a retrieval date in the narrow case of a source designed to change without archiving, such as a live dictionary entry or a continuously updated map.

Secondary citation — quoting something you have only encountered inside another work — uses the as cited in formula, and only the source you actually read appears in your reference list. APA is explicit that this should be a last resort, used when the original is genuinely unavailable, out of print or in a language you cannot read. If the original is accessible, read it. A dissertation with a visible chain of secondary citations invites the question of how much of the literature was actually consulted.

Tables, Figures and Appendices in APA

APA treats tables and figures as parallel structures with the same components: a number in bold above the item, a brief italicised title on the next line, the table or image itself, and where needed a note beneath giving explanations, abbreviation definitions, probability values and source information. Number them in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and refer to each one by number rather than by phrases such as the table below, since layout shifts when a document is reformatted.

Anything reproduced or adapted from another source needs a copyright attribution in the note, naming the original author, year, source and, where applicable, the licence. This applies to images you have redrawn as well as to those you have copied, and it is an area where students frequently and unknowingly infringe. If you generated the figure yourself from your own data, no attribution is needed but it is worth saying so explicitly.

Appendices carry material that supports the argument without belonging in the flow: full questionnaires, interview schedules, coding frames, extended data tables, ethics documentation. Label a single appendix simply as Appendix and multiple ones with letters, give each a title, and reference every one from the main text. An appendix nobody is directed to is treated as padding, and material essential to understanding your results should not be hidden there.

How APA Differs From Harvard — and Why It Matters in the UK

This trips up more UK students than any other single point, because both systems are author–date and superficially similar. The critical difference is that APA is a single published standard maintained by one body, whereas Harvard is a family of author–date conventions with no central authority, so every university publishes its own variant. That means an APA question has a definitive answer and a Harvard question has an institutional one.

In practice the visible differences cluster in small places: whether titles are in sentence case or title case, whether the place of publication is included, how many authors trigger et al., whether an ampersand or the word and appears in brackets, whether page ranges use the abbreviation pp., and how the date sits relative to the author. None of these are difficult individually; the damage comes from unconsciously mixing the two, which produces a reference list that follows neither and reads as careless.

The practical rule is to work from one document only. If your handbook says APA 7, use the current APA manual or your library’s APA guide and nothing else. If it says Harvard, use your own university’s Harvard guide rather than a generic online one, because the generic version will differ from what your marker has in front of them. Our Harvard referencing guide sets out the most common UK variant for comparison.

Bias-Free Language and a Final APA Self-Check

APA is unusual among referencing styles in also prescribing how you write about people, and UK markers on psychology, nursing, education and social work programmes increasingly assess it. The principles are specificity and respect: describe people at the level of detail your study actually justifies, use the terms communities use for themselves, put the person before the condition where that is the preferred convention in your field, avoid unnecessary comparisons that imply a default group, and report age, gender, ethnicity and disability only where they are relevant to the research question. Where guidance has shifted, follow current usage rather than the phrasing in older papers you are citing.

Before you submit, run a short check in this order. Confirm every in-text citation has a reference-list entry and vice versa. Check that years match between the two. Verify that every direct quotation has a page or locator and that the wording is exact. Look at your author formatting: ampersands inside brackets, the word and in text, et al. applied from the first citation for three or more authors.

Then check the list itself. Is it alphabetical by first author surname, double-spaced, with hanging indents? Are article titles in sentence case and journal names in italics with volume italicised and issue in brackets? Do DOIs appear as full links and resolve when clicked? Are there any library proxy addresses to replace? Finally, read the list as a whole and ask whether it reflects genuine engagement with current literature in your field. For a version of this walkthrough focused specifically on the seventh edition, see our APA 7 referencing guide.

Frequently asked questions about APA referencing