APA 7 Reference List: How to Format It Correctly Every Time

The APA 7 reference page is where most APA 7 format errors live. It's also where most of your time goes when formatting manually. Whether you need an APA 7 journal article citation, an APA 7 book citation, or an APA 7 website citation, every reference type has its own structure — and the rules around indentation, capitalization, italics, and DOIs are specific and unforgiving.

Here's the complete APA 7 reference list example guide — how to cite in APA 7 for every source type.

APA 7 Reference Page Setup

Your APA 7 reference page starts on a new page after the body of your paper. The word "References" appears at the top, centered and bold. This heading is not italicized, not underlined, and not in all caps. It's simply bold and centered.

Every entry in the list is double-spaced, with no extra space between entries. Each entry uses a hanging indent: the first line is flush left, and all subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches.

Entries are arranged alphabetically by the first author's last name.

The Four Elements of Every APA 7 Citation

Almost every APA 7 citation on your reference page follows a four-element structure:

Author. (Date). Title. Source.

The specifics of each element change depending on what you're citing, but this underlying structure stays consistent.

APA 7 Journal Article Citation

The APA 7 journal article citation is the most common reference type in academic writing. The format is:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article in sentence case. Title of Journal in Title Case, Volume(Issue), page-page. https://doi.org/xxxxx

Key details:

• Article title uses sentence case (only capitalize the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon)
• Journal name uses Title Case and is italicized
• Volume number is italicized; issue number is not
• No period after a DOI or URL
• DOIs are formatted as full HTTPS links

If there's no DOI and you accessed the article through a database, do not include the database name or URL. Just end the reference after the page range. APA 7 considers database names unnecessary because the same article appears across multiple databases.

APA 7 Book Citation

Author, A. A. (Year). Book title: Subtitle in sentence case (Edition). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx

Key details:

• Book title is italicized and in sentence case
• Include edition number in parentheses if it's not the first edition
• Publisher location is NOT required in APA 7 — this was eliminated from the previous edition
• Include DOI if available
• No period after DOI

Edited Book Chapters

Author, A. A. (Year). Chapter title in sentence case. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Book title in sentence case (pp. xx-xx). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx

Key details:

• Use (Ed.) for one editor, (Eds.) for multiple editors
• Chapter title is not italicized; book title is
• Include page range of the chapter

APA 7 Website Citation

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page or article. Site Name. URL

Key details:

• If the author is an organization and the organization is also the site name, omit the site name to avoid repetition
• Use (n.d.) if no date is available
• Do not use "Anonymous" as the author. Use the article title in place of the author if no author is identified
• Website page titles are italicized in APA 7 when there is no author

Author Rules

One author: Author, A. A.

Two authors: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B.

Three to twenty authors: List all of them, with an ampersand before the last: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., Author, C. C., & Author, D. D.

Twenty-one or more authors: List the first 19, insert an ellipsis (no ampersand before it), then the final author: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., ... Author, Z. Z.

This is a significant change from APA 6, which only required listing up to seven authors before using an ellipsis.

Alphabetical Order

References are ordered letter-by-letter by the first author's surname:

• Single-author entries come before multi-author entries beginning with the same surname
• Same first author with different co-authors: order by second author's surname
• Same author(s), different years: order chronologically (oldest first)
• Same author(s), same year: add lowercase letters after the year (2023a, 2023b) based on alphabetical order of titles

Ignore "A," "An," and "The" at the beginning of titles used in place of an author name.

DOIs and URLs

APA 7 simplified DOI and URL formatting:

• DOIs are presented as full URLs: https://doi.org/xxxxx
• No "DOI:" or "doi:" label
• No "Retrieved from" before URLs
• No access dates unless the content is designed to change (like a wiki page)
• No period after a DOI or URL
• Live hyperlinks are acceptable and often preferred

Common APA 7 Reference Page Mistakes

Not using hanging indents. This is the single most visible APA 7 format error in any reference page. Every APA 7 reference list example you see uses a 0.5-inch hanging indent.

Inconsistent capitalization. Article and chapter titles use sentence case. Journal names, book titles referenced in text, and periodical titles use Title Case. Mixing these up is common.

Adding publisher location. APA 7 removed this requirement. If your references say "New York, NY: Publisher Name," you're using APA 6 formatting.

Period after DOI. There should be no period after a DOI or URL. This is easy to miss because every other element of the reference ends with a period.

Listing database names. If you accessed a journal article through a database like EBSCO or ProQuest, do not include the database name. Just end the reference after the page range (or DOI if available).

The Time Problem with APA 7 Format in Word

A reference page with 30 entries takes most students 60-90 minutes to format manually in Word: checking each APA 7 citation against the rules, fixing hanging indents, verifying DOI formats, ensuring proper capitalization, and getting the alphabetical order right. No APA 7 template handles reference formatting correctly. For longer papers with 50-100+ references, figuring out how to format APA 7 in Word takes hours.

SimpleFormat Pro handles APA 7 reference page formatting automatically. Hanging indents, alphabetical ordering, double-spacing, bold heading — every APA 7 format rule is applied in seconds.

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