APA 7 is the most widely used style in the social sciences, education and health. The system is simpler than it looks: a source appears in exactly two places, and the two have to match.
- The in-text citation — a short parenthesis, right where you use the source.
- The reference list — the full description, at the end, in alphabetical order.
The rule underneath all of it: every parenthesis in your text must be findable in the reference list, and everything in the reference list must be cited at least once. If something sits in the list but never appears in the text, it does not belong there.
Citing inside the text
The basic form is surname and year:
Source criticism is a skill that has to be practised (Jensen, 2019).
Jensen (2019) describes source criticism as a skill that has to be practised.
The only difference is where the author sits. If you use the name in the sentence itself, the year goes in brackets straight after it.
When you quote word for word
A direct quotation needs a page number. This is where most people slip:
She calls it "a skill you cannot read your way to" (Jensen, 2019, p. 42).
The quotation goes in quotation marks and must be exact — including any errors in the original. Over 40 words, it becomes a block quotation: indented, no quotation marks, with the parenthesis after the full stop.
Several authors
| Authors | In brackets | In the sentence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | (Jensen, 2019) | Jensen (2019) |
| 2 | (Jensen & Holm, 2019) | Jensen and Holm (2019) |
| 3 or more | (Jensen et al., 2019) | Jensen et al. (2019) |
Note that APA 7 uses et al. from three authors onwards — from the very first citation. APA 6 was different: it had you list everyone the first time. If your guide says otherwise, that is usually the part that is out of date.
The reference list
The list goes at the end, sorted alphabetically by the author's surname, with a hanging indent (first line at the margin, the rest indented).
Book
Jensen, K. (2019). Source criticism in practice. Gyldendal.
Journal article
Holm, M. (2021). Digital literacy in upper secondary school. Journal of Educational Research, 69(2), 34–48. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/jer.2021.02
If the article has a DOI, include it. It is a permanent address — it still works after the journal redesigns its website.
Web page
World Health Organization. (2023, March 14). Physical activity recommendations. https://www.who.int/example
An organisation can perfectly well be the author. With no date, write (n.d.).
The five recurring mistakes
- Missing page number on a direct quotation. The most common one, and the easiest to fix.
- Text and list disagreeing. A source you cut from the text but forgot to delete from the list — or the reverse.
- "Retrieved from" in front of URLs. APA 7 dropped it. The URL stands on its own, unless the content changes continuously and you need a retrieval date.
- Secondary sources presented as primary. If you read about Bourdieu in a textbook, say so: (Bourdieu, 1986, as cited in Jensen, 2019).
- Paraphrase without a citation. Putting it in your own words does not remove the need for a source. The idea is still not yours.
Tools help, they do not guarantee
Word's built-in reference manager and services like Zotero and Mendeley generate references automatically. They are right most of the time — but they fail systematically on organisations as authors, on chapters in edited collections, and on anything pulled from a PDF without proper metadata.
Use them to go faster, then read the list through at the end with the rules above at hand. It takes ten minutes and catches almost everything.