APA referencing: a UK student guide
The 7th edition, which most UK departments now require. In-text rules, reference formats, and the four errors that appear in almost every draft.
APA is the standard in psychology, education and much of health science. Unlike Harvard, it has a single governing body and a published manual, which means there is a genuinely correct answer. That is good news: the rules are learnable rather than local.
This guide covers the 7th edition, published in 2019 and now required by most UK departments.
In-text citations
| Situation | Parenthetical | Narrative |
|---|---|---|
| One author | (Ahmed, 2024) | Ahmed (2024) found... |
| Two authors | (Ahmed & Brown, 2024) | Ahmed and Brown (2024) found... |
| Three or more | (Ahmed et al., 2024) | Ahmed et al. (2024) found... |
| Organisation | (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025) | The World Health Organization (WHO, 2025)... |
| Direct quotation | (Ahmed, 2024, p. 87) | Ahmed (2024) wrote that... (p. 87) |
| No date | (Ahmed, n.d.) | Ahmed (n.d.) suggests... |
| Secondary source | (Brown, 2019, as cited in Ahmed, 2024) | Brown (2019, as cited in Ahmed, 2024)... |
Note the ampersand. APA uses & inside brackets and the word andin running text. Getting that backwards is the most frequent small error in APA drafts.
Reference list formats
Journal article with a DOI
Ahmed, S., & Brown, T. (2024). Adherence and attrition in adolescent trials. Journal of Health Research, 18(3), 210–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/12345678.2024.1234567
Journal article without a DOI
Clark, R. (2023). Measuring adherence in community settings. Public Health Quarterly, 12(1), 44–61.
Book
Ahmed, S. (2024). Reassessing intervention effects in adolescent health (2nd ed.). Northgate Academic.
No publisher location in the 7th edition. If your guide still asks for Manchester: before the publisher, it is using the 6th.
Chapter in an edited book
Brown, T. (2023). Measuring adherence in community settings. In R. Clark (Ed.), Public health methods (pp. 44–61). Ashgrove Press.
Editor initials come before the surname here, which is the reverse of the author position.
Webpage
National Health Service. (2025, March 14). Adolescent mental health services: Annual review. https://www.nhs.uk/example
Report
Department for Education. (2025). Widening participation in higher education (DfE Report No. 4412). https://www.gov.uk/example
Thesis
Clark, R. (2023). Attrition in longitudinal adolescent studies [Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds]. EThOS.
Dataset
Office for National Statistics. (2025). Labour force survey: April 2025 [Data set]. https://www.ons.gov.uk/example
Sentence case, and why it catches everyone
APA capitalises article and book titles in sentence case: first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon. Journal names stay in title case. Almost every citation generator gets this wrong, because it copies the capitalisation from the source page.
Wrong
Ahmed, S. (2024). Adherence And Attrition In Adolescent Trials. Journal Of Health Research.
Right
Ahmed, S. (2024). Adherence and attrition in adolescent trials. Journal of Health Research.
What changed from the 6th edition
| Element | 6th edition | 7th edition |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher location | Manchester: Northgate | Northgate |
| et al. threshold | Six or more authors | Three or more |
| Authors listed | Up to seven | Up to twenty |
| DOI format | doi:10.1080/... | https://doi.org/10.1080/... |
| URLs | Retrieved from https://... | https://... |
| Singular they | Discouraged | Explicitly endorsed |
Formatting the reference list
- Heading is References, centred and bold, on a new page
- Alphabetical by first author surname
- Hanging indent of 1.27cm on every entry
- Double-spaced throughout, including within entries
- Same author, multiple years: earliest first
- Same author, same year: add a, b, c and order alphabetically by title
Four errors we correct in almost every APA document
- Ampersand in running text. Ahmed & Brown (2024) argued should be Ahmed and Brown (2024) argued.
- Title case on article titles. Generator output pasted without checking.
- Publisher location left in. A 6th-edition habit that persists.
- et al. from the second citation only. In the 7th edition it applies from the first, for three or more authors.
None of them affects your argument, and all of them are visible to a marker skimming your reference list before reading a word of the essay. Ourcitation styles guide compares APA against the other systems if you need to switch between modules.
Last updated: 30 July 2026 · Written by the AssignWise editorial team ·Spotted something wrong?
Frequently asked questions
APA is author-date. In the text you give the author surname and year, for example (Ahmed, 2024), and add a page number for direct quotations. Every source then appears alphabetically in a reference list under the heading References.
The publisher location was dropped, up to twenty authors are now listed in full, "et al." begins at three authors rather than six, DOIs are formatted as https links, and the phrase "Retrieved from" is no longer needed before a URL.
From the first citation onwards for any work with three or more authors. Write (Ahmed et al., 2024) every time. Two-author works always name both authors, on every occasion.
Sentence case for article, chapter and book titles, meaning only the first word, proper nouns and the word after a colon are capitalised. Journal names keep title case. This is the mistake generators make most often.
With no author, move the title into the author position. With no date, write (n.d.) in place of the year, both in the text and in the reference list. Do not guess a date from a copyright notice.
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