APA 7 references page rules: heading, order, spacing, and what each entry needs

The APA 7 reference list begins on a new page after the text. The heading References is centred and bold at the top of that page. Every entry is double-spaced with a half-inch hanging indent, the list is in alphabetical order by the first author's surname, and every entry must be cited somewhere in the text. Journal articles end with a DOI written as a link. Upload the paper to the free APA format checker and the page, order and indents are done for you, with any citation that has no entry pointed out.

The page

• Own page. Insert a page break before the heading; the list never starts under the last paragraph.
• Heading. References, bold, centred, same font and size as the text. Not Works Cited, not Bibliography.
• Double-spaced throughout, with no extra blank lines between entries.
• Hanging indent of 0.5 inch on every entry: first line flush left, later lines indented. See how to set a hanging indent.
• Alphabetical order by the first author's surname, letter by letter. Entries by the same first author are ordered by year, earliest first. Organisation authors are alphabetised by the first significant word of the name.

The entries

A journal article, the most common entry in a student paper:

Levine, M. P., & Murnen, S. K. (2009). Everybody knows that mass media are/are not a cause of eating disorders: A critical review of evidence for a causal link between media, negative body image, and disordered eating in females. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28(1), 9–42. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2009.28.1.9

The parts: surnames and initials, with an ampersand before the last author; the year in brackets; the article title in sentence case (only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns capitalised); the journal title and volume in italics; the issue in brackets, not italic; the page range with an en dash; the DOI as a full link. Up to twenty authors are listed; for more, the first nineteen, an ellipsis, and the last.

A book: author, year, title in italics (edition in brackets), publisher. A chapter in an edited book: author, year, chapter title, In editors (Eds.), book title (pp. range), publisher.

Every entry cited, every citation listed

The list contains only sources cited in the text, and every source cited in the text appears in the list. Markers check this by hand; Veermat's report checks it automatically in both directions and lists the exceptions.

Common deductions

• The list starting mid-page instead of on its own page.
• Entries typed as several short lines, so the hanging indent only catches the first line.
• Blank lines between entries.
• Article titles in Title Case instead of sentence case.
• Missing DOIs on journal articles that have them. Veermat can look these up on CrossRef from the report.
• A list out of alphabetical order.

Building entries

The APA reference generator builds an entry from a DOI, ISBN or title using the publisher's record, so the volume, issue, pages and DOI are right before you paste it in.