APA Citation Style 7th edition

Font - use same font throughout

Check with your instructor for preferences. APA recommends the following:

• Sans serif fonts - 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode
• Serif font - 12-point Times News Roman or 11-point Georgia

Spacing - Double-space entire paper, including Reference list and block quotes.

Margins - use 1 in. (2.54 cm) margins on all sides (Bound dissertations have different requirements for binding)

Parenthetical References - used in text of paper for all sources of information/data, whether paraphrased or direct quote

Page Numbers - Added once paper complete to top right-hand corner, number pages consecutively, beginning with title page .

APA 7th edition provides different formatting instructions for title pages of student and professional (scholarly publications/thesis/dissertation).
Information provided from APA Manual of Style, 7th ed. sections 2.1 thru 2.8

Titles should appear:

• In both upper and lower case centered in the upper half of the page (three to four lines down from top margin of the page.)
• Centered and written in boldface

Student Title page should contain:

• Title
• Name of each author
• Affiliation (Department/Division, University
• Course #; Course name for which paper being submitted
• Instructor's Name [check with instructor for preferred form; e.g. "Dr." "Professor," name with credentials (PhD, RN)]
• Assignment due date (Month date, year)
• Page number (flush right in page header)

Professional Title page should contain:

• Title of Paper
• Name of each author
• Affiliation (Department/Division, University
• Author Note (see section 2.7 for details)
• Running Head
  • (abbreviated version of paper title [Included on all pages, see section 2.8])
  • Only required for manuscripts being submitted for publication.
  • Maximum of 50 characters
  • Flush left in page header
• Page number (flush right in page header)

Refer to the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) General Format website for examples: 
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html

APA recognizes 4 elements of a Reference

• Author (Who is responsible for the work?)
• Date (When was the work published?)
• Title (What is the work called?)
• Source (Where can I retrieve the work?)

Key guidelines for each of the elements are provided below. For more specific and detailed guidelines, please refer to a print copy of the manual.

General Reference Format:

Author

• Invert all individual authors' names with surname first followed by coma and initials separated by one space.
• Separate each author name with a coma
• When there are two to 20 authors, use an ampersand (&) before the final author's name
• Provide surname and initials for up to and including 20 authors
• When there are more than 20 authors, List first 19 authors' names, insert an ellipsis and the final author's name.
• Use author name exactly as it appears in the published work.

Date

• Books - use the copyright date shown on the work's copyright page
• Journal - use the year of the volume
• Website
  • Do not use the copyright date from the website footer as it may be not be the date of the content you are using as a reference. If date of publication is not provide for reference, treat it as having no date.
  • Provide a retrieval date in the source reference when citing an unarchived work that is likely to change.

Title

• For works like journal articles and edited book chapters, do not italicize titles or use quotation marks and capitalize the first word and proper nouns only
• Italicize title items that can stand alone such as books, reports, webpages, and websites
• For works without a title, include a description of the work in square brackets

Source

• Indicates where the readers can retrieve the cited work
• For journal articles the source is the journal; for edited book chapters the source is the edited book
• For stand-alone items (such as books, reports, webpage, dissertations/theses, films, etc.) the source is the publisher plus any DOI or URL
• Format
  • Print book (without DOI) has only book publisher
  • Journal article (with DOI) has journal title, volume, issue and page numbers AND DOI

DOIs and URLs

• Final component of the reference entry, presented as a hyperlink
• Include a DOI for all works that have a DOI, regardless if you used the online or print version
• For online sources with both URL and DOI, use only the DOI
• Include a URL in the reference when there is no DOI
• For works from most academic research databases, do not include a URL or database information because these are widely available. Reference should be the same as the  print version of the work. 
• For works from databases with original material only in the particular database (Visible Body, ERIC, Value Line, Statista, &  IBISWorld) include the name of database and the URL for the database.

Source:

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Format

• Begin on new page after the text. Center heading, "References" at top of page
• Order references alphabetically by author
• Entire list is double-spaced
• Hanging indent of 0.5 to each entry (first line flush with left margin; all other entry lines are indented 0.5 in from margin).

Order

• Entries entered in alphabetical order by surname of first author.
• When ordering multiple works by one author, include author's name in each entry. Order according to year of publication, earliest first.
• Multiple author entries with same first author and different additional authors should be ordered alphabetically by surname of second author
• When multiple works have the same author(s) and date, put a lowercase letter after the year in both text citation and reference. Compare dates (only year comes before specific date; specific dates in chronological order)
• Order of works with No Author/Anonymous Author
  • Consider if the group/organization is the author
  • Only begin an entry with "Anonymous," when work is signed with the word "Anonymous"
  • If there is no author and it is not signed "Anonymous" the reference begins with source title. Alphabetize by first significant word.
  • Alphabetize numbers at the start of a source as if they were spelled out.