Besides all the important aspects of formatting, referencing the used sources appeared to be one of the most important things to do. Even students at high school understand that borrowed ideas have to be cited properly with the list of the used sources at the end of the paper. However, it is never obvious on how the formatting has to be done without learning specific rules that must be followed. As a result, the APA reference page has its unique guidelines on how to organize each source so that it adheres to all the norms of the American Psychological Association.
General Rules for
APA Reference Page
- The APA reference page (list of sources) should be at the end of your work.
- Place this page separately from the text to increase readability. Therefore, the APA format reference page should start from a blank list.
- Such a page should have a specific heading that identifies what you are writing on that page. Consequently, the APA reference page has a heading “References.”
- Even in the cases where there is only one source on the APA reference page, you must still use “Reference” heading. Hence, that is simply a rule of APA formatting.
- Also, center the word “References.”
- The word “References” should appear on the top of the page.
- While we are dealing with formatting, you must never try to highlight the “References” word additionally. So, no italicization, weird fonts, and so on. Simple, plain text in Times New Roman, 12pt.
- For all further lines, the writer should use the hanging indentation. However, the indentation should be 0,5 inch.
- Use double space for the APA reference page.
References
- The list of all sources used has to be organized alphabetically.
- As a fact, the last names of all author go first, making them inverted.
- Consequently, 7 authors per source are the limit in the APA reference page. Therefore, if there are more than 7 authors present in work, you put ellipses after the 6th and mention the last author after that.
- Title of the books, as well as journal/periodicals’ names, should be italicized.
- Also, you should never italicize or put in quotation marks the title of the articles or parts of the lengthy works, such as chapters.
- Additionally, as for the titles of works, use sentence case. For more information on sentence and title case, make sure to check the APA citation rules article on my blog.
- However, for the names of periodicals/journals, use title case.
- Do not forget about the phrase “Retrieved from” at the end of the citation for online sources. Hence, the phrase has to be followed by a link of where the source was taken from. Additionally, there should be no hyperlinks on the APA reference page. Therefore, make sure you delete it if such appear because the text should not be different from the plain text.
Further Reading
As always, for more information on APA format, do not forget to check all related articles on my blog and check for updates frequently as I update the content all the time. Also, do not forget to check available information on other paper formats, essay structure, APA annotated bibliography, citing in APA format, APA style paper, APA reference format, how to cite APA style, and more.