APA referencing is the author-date style of referencing described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. In this style, each reference consists of an in-text citation of the author and date, with the full details in the reference list at the end of the document.
How to use this APA 7 Referencing guide:
This Guide provides an introduction to the most commonly used elements in the APA7 style. For further information, refer to the APA Style Blog or the APA Publication Manual.
If using EndNote version X9.3 or prior you will need to download the APA 7 style as per these instructions.
If using EndNote version 20 the APA 7 style is available within the software; see the Selecting Styles in EndNote tab at this link for instructions.
Use these APA 7 referencing style guiding principles to construct in-text citations and a full end-text reference list of sources across all format types.
The 2 parts to acknowledging reference material in the APA style work in partnership, to indicate to your reader where your ideas have come from and how they can locate the original source of these:
APA7 style requires that in-text citations consist of the author(s) and date, in brackets, with a comma in between, eg; (Smith, 2020).
Single author | Two authors | Three or more authors |
Author's surname |
Both author's surnames, in the same order as on the publication, separated by an ampersand ('&') If using the author's name in your sentence (a "narrative reference") spell out the 'and' |
List the first author's surname only, followed by "et al." |
(Nguyen, 2020) |
(Xi & Carson, 2019) Salas and D'Agostino (2020) found... |
(Martin et al., 2020) |
If citing multiple items in the same point in your document, place in alphabetical order by first author's surname with a semicolon between them eg; (Barker & Atif, 2019; Lai, 2019).
Include a page number/s in your in-text reference where you are directly quoting. However it is best to paraphrase. Only quote if the original author's exact wording is definitely required. See this "Quotations" section of the APA Blog for guidance on when to use direct quotes and how to construct intext references from materials with and without page numbers.
View our example text for a demonstration of the use of direct quotations and page numbers within an in-text reference.
The reference list contains enough information for the reader to locate the source you have referenced. See below for the basic information to include in all reference list entries and how they should be formatted, based on the APA Style Blog page Basic Principles of Reference List Entries and Elements of Reference List Entries. Refer to the examples to see exactly how these rules are applied.
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