APA Referencing Guide
Master APA author–date citations and reference list entries for books, journal articles and web pages.
APA (American Psychological Association) style is the author–date referencing system used across psychology, education, business and the social sciences. Its logic is simple: every idea you borrow points back to a source you can identify in two places — an in-text citation where you use it, and a full entry in the reference list at the end.
In-text citations: author and year
Every time you use someone else's idea, name the author and the year. As a narrative citation you integrate it into the sentence — "Rogers (1961) argued that…" — or as a parenthetical citation at the end — "…the self is formed through experience (Rogers, 1961)."
Two authors are joined with 'and' in a narrative citation and '&' in parentheses: "(Smith & Jones, 2020)". Three or more authors use 'et al.' after the first name: "(Walker et al., 2019)".
Building the reference list entry
Your reference list sits on its own page, alphabetised by author, with each entry following a slot-based format. The pattern is Author — Date — Title — Source.
- Book: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher.
- Journal article: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxx
- Web page: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. https://www.url
Common mistakes and fixes
The two mistakes that cost the most marks are an inconsistent in-text citation format and entries that do not match the citation (a reference list entry must always answer an in-text citation, and vice versa). Keep a running reference list as you write rather than reconstructing it at the end.
When you cite a source you read inside another source, that is a secondary citation — cite the work you actually read, and use 'as cited in' to show the chain.
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