Quick answer: An APA reference page (APA 7th edition) starts on a new page at the end of your paper, with the heading References centered and in bold. Entries are double-spaced, use a 0.5-inch hanging indent, and are listed in alphabetical order by the first author’s surname.

Each entry gives the author, date, title and source; titles of articles and books use sentence case, journal and book titles are italicized, and DOIs are written as https://doi.org/ links. Every source cited in your text must appear on the reference page, and every entry on the page must be cited in your text.

The reference page is where most APA marks are lost, not because the rules are hard but because there are many small ones and they apply to every entry. This guide works through the page from top to bottom: the layout, the order of entries, the anatomy of a reference, the most common source types with examples, and a final checklist to run before you submit. The formatting rules below follow APA Style, 7th edition; your instructor or institution may modify some of them, so check your assignment guidance as well.

APA reference page layout: the formatting rules

The heading is “References”, not “Bibliography” or “Works Cited”. APA reference lists contain only the works you cited; a bibliography of background reading is a different document and is not used in APA papers unless an instructor asks for one.

How to set a hanging indent

Do not create the indent with tabs or spaces at the start of each line, because the alignment breaks as soon as an entry changes length. Use your word processor’s paragraph setting instead:

• Microsoft Word: select the entries, open Paragraph settings, choose “Hanging” under Special and set it to 0.5 inch (1.27 cm).
• Google Docs: select the entries, open Format, Align and indent, Indentation options, choose “Hanging” and set 0.5 inch.
• LaTeX or reference managers: use an APA 7 style file or citation style, and check that it applies the hanging indent in your output.

Putting entries in order

Alphabetical order sounds simple, but APA has specific rules for the cases that trip students up:

1. Letter by letter, “nothing precedes something”. A shorter surname comes before a longer one that starts with the same letters, so Brown comes before Browning.
2. Same first author, one-author works first. Single-author works by an author come before multi-author works that begin with the same surname.
3. Same first author, different coauthors. Order by the surname of the second author, then the third, and so on.
4. Same author or authors, different years. Order chronologically, earliest first.
5. Same author or authors, same year. Add lowercase letters after the year (2024a, 2024b) and order the entries by title; use the same letters in your in-text citations.
6. No author. Move the title to the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word, ignoring “A”, “An” and “The”.
7. Group authors. Alphabetize by the first significant word of the organization’s full name, such as American Psychological Association.

The anatomy of an APA reference

Almost every APA reference answers four questions in the same order: who, when, what and where.

• Who (author): surname, then initials, for up to 20 authors, separated by commas, with an ampersand before the last. For 21 or more, list the first 19, then an ellipsis, then the final author. Group authors are written out in full.
• When (date): the year in parentheses, followed by a period. Add month and day for sources such as newspaper articles and webpages where APA requires them, and use (n.d.) when there is no date.
• What (title): sentence case for article, chapter, book, report and webpage titles, capitalizing only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns. Italicize works that stand alone, such as books and reports.
• Where (source): for a journal article, the journal name and volume in italics, then the issue in parentheses, the page range or article number, and the DOI. For a book, the publisher and DOI if there is one. For a webpage, the site name and URL.

Journal titles are the exception to sentence case: they use title case, so Studies in Higher Education keeps its capitals, and you keep any nonstandard capitalization a journal uses in its name.

Examples for the most common source types

The entries below follow APA 7 patterns. On a real reference page they would be double-spaced with a hanging indent, and the italic elements would appear in italics as shown.

Journal article with a DOI

Walters, W. H., & Wilder, E. I. (2023). Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 14045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41032-5

Journal article with several authors

Liang, W., Yuksekgonul, M., Mao, Y., Wu, E., & Zou, J. (2023). GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers. Patterns, 4(7), Article 100779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2023.100779

Authored book, later edition

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE.

Book by a group author

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Report from an organization

Stephenson, R., & Armstrong, C. (2026). Student generative AI survey 2026 (HEPI Report 199). Higher Education Policy Institute. https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/HEPI-Report-199-Gen-AI-Survey-2026.pdf

When the publisher is also the author, APA omits the publisher name to avoid repeating it, as in the group-author book above. Publisher locations are not included in APA 7 references, and the words “Retrieved from” are not used before a DOI or URL. For more source types, the site’s guides cover how to reference a website in APA, datasets, software and code and AI-generated content.

DOIs, URLs and retrieval dates

• DOIs: write them as links beginning https://doi.org/, without the label “DOI:”. Include a DOI whenever a work has one, including print books.
• URLs: include a URL for works from websites that have no DOI. Do not include a URL for works retrieved from academic research databases without a DOI; treat them like print works.
• No final period: do not add a period after a DOI or URL at the end of an entry, because it can break the link.
• Retrieval dates: include “Retrieved Month Day, Year, from” only for unarchived pages designed to change over time, such as a live dashboard or a frequently updated profile.

Matching the reference page to your in-text citations

The reference page and the in-text citations are two halves of one system. Each in-text citation, such as (Walters & Wilder, 2023), points to exactly one entry, and the surname and year must match exactly. Personal communications, such as an email or an unrecorded conversation, are the main exception: they are cited in the text but do not appear on the reference page. Before you submit, check the pairing both ways: go through the text and tick off each citation on the list, then go through the list and find each entry in the text. Any orphan in either direction is an error. The guide to citing sources in APA format step by step covers the in-text side in detail.

Reference page versus bibliography and annotated bibliography

Students switching between styles often mix these up. In APA, the reference page lists only works you cited. A bibliography, used in some other styles and some disciplines, can include works consulted but not cited. An annotated bibliography is a separate assignment in which each APA-formatted entry is followed by a short paragraph summarizing and evaluating the source. If an instructor asks for an annotated bibliography in APA style, keep the reference formatting exactly as above and indent the annotation beneath each entry. And if you are moving between APA and MLA, the comparison of MLA and APA format sets out where the two systems differ.

The reference page in a thesis or dissertation

A thesis uses the same APA rules, but its length raises practical questions that a five-page paper never does. Most theses keep a single reference list at the end of the document rather than one per chapter, though some institutions and thesis-by-publication formats allow or require chapter-level lists, so check your graduate school’s formatting guide. The list often runs to dozens of pages, which makes consistency harder to maintain by hand: a reference manager such as Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote, set to APA 7, keeps entries in order and updates the list as you add citations, but its output still needs checking, because imported metadata frequently carries title case, missing issue numbers or incomplete author lists. Build the habit of correcting each record when you first add it, not in the final week. Theses also cite source types that ordinary papers rarely do, such as other theses, unpublished datasets, archival documents and conference papers, so look up the APA pattern for each type rather than adapting the journal article format. Finally, many universities check the reference list during format review before the thesis can be deposited, and a list with inconsistent formatting can delay your submission.

The most common reference page mistakes

1. Indenting with tabs or spaces instead of a hanging indent setting.
2. Using title case for article and book titles, which APA writes in sentence case.
3. Forgetting to italicize the journal volume number along with the journal name.
4. Including the publisher location, which APA 7 dropped.
5. Writing “DOI:” or “Retrieved from” before links.
6. Listing sources you read but did not cite.
7. Copying references from a citation generator or database export without checking capitalization, author names and DOIs against the source.
8. Ordering entries by date or by order of appearance instead of alphabetically.

Checklist before you submit

• The page starts on a new page, headed “References”, bold and centered.
• All entries are double-spaced with a 0.5-inch hanging indent.
• Entries are in alphabetical order, with same-author and no-author cases ordered correctly.
• Every entry has author, date, title and source, in that order.
• Titles use sentence case; journal names use title case; standalone works and journal volumes are italicized.
• DOIs are https://doi.org/ links, with no final period.
• Every in-text citation has a matching entry, and every entry is cited.

For a related guide, see in-text citations in APA 7.

Where Tesify fits

A clean reference page is easier to maintain when your sources and chapters are organized from the start. Start structuring your thesis in Tesify. It helps you structure and organize your thesis as you write it, and 9,000+ students have written 15,000+ chapters with Tesify. Every word stays 100% written by you.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Is the APA reference page double-spaced?

Yes. APA 7 reference pages are double-spaced throughout, both within and between entries, with no extra blank lines between references.

Should the APA reference page be titled References or Bibliography?

Use “References”, centered and in bold. APA reference lists include only the works you cited, so “Bibliography” and “Works Cited” are not used.

How big is the hanging indent in APA?

The hanging indent is 0.5 inch, or about 1.27 cm. Set it through your word processor’s paragraph settings rather than with tabs or spaces.

How do you alphabetize an APA reference page?

Alphabetize letter by letter by the first author’s surname. Single-author works come before multi-author works by the same first author, and works by the same authors are ordered by year.

Do I include the publisher location in APA 7?

No. APA 7 omits publisher locations; give only the publisher’s name, and omit it entirely when the publisher is the same as the author.

How should DOIs appear on the reference page?

Write DOIs as links that begin https://doi.org/, without the label “DOI:” and without a period at the end.

Does the reference page count toward the word count?

Usually not, but it depends on your institution or instructor, so check the assignment or thesis regulations.

Do personal communications go on the reference page?

No. Personal communications such as emails and unrecorded conversations are cited in the text only and are not listed on the reference page.