APA Reference Page: Format, Order and Examples

An APA reference page is the list of every source you cited in the text, started on its own page after the body of the paper. Under the APA 7th edition it carries a bold, centered “References” label, double-spaced entries with a 0.5 inch hanging indent, and an alphabetical order by the first word of each entry. This guide gives the page setup for the APA reference list, the ordering rules, a full sample page and the entry patterns for the sources students cite most. For the wider style rules, see the APA citation style guide.

How to format the APA reference page

The setup rules for APA style are short, and they apply to the whole page. APA publishes them as reference list setup, and the table below follows that page.

Setting	What APA 7 asks for
Start	A new page after the text of the paper.
Label	“References” at the top, bold and centered. Not “Works Cited,” “Bibliography” or “Reference List.” A list with a single entry may use “Reference.”
Entries	Each reference is one paragraph, aligned to the left margin.
Order	Alphabetical by the first word of the entry, usually the first author’s last name.
Indent	0.5 inch hanging indent on the whole list: the first line sits flush left and every later line is indented.
Spacing	Double-spaced throughout, with no extra space between entries.
Page numbers	Shown in the top right corner of every page, including the reference pages.
Match with the text	Every work cited in the text appears in the list, and every entry in the list is cited in the text.

Two exceptions to the match rule are worth knowing. Personal communications such as emails and interviews are cited in the text only, and a general mention of a whole website needs a link in the text but no reference entry.

How to order the entries

Most lists sort by last name and that is the end of it. Trouble starts when two entries share an author, a year or no author at all. The table covers the cases students hit most, using the rules in the Publication Manual and APA’s guidance on works with the same author and date.

Situation	How to sort it
Same first author, different years	Earliest year first. Smith (2018) comes before Smith (2021).
Same first author, one solo and one with co-authors	The solo-author entry goes first, then the entries with co-authors, sorted by the second author’s surname.
Same author and same year	Sort by title, then add a lowercase letter after the year: (2020a), (2020b). Use the same letters in the in-text citations.
No date	Write “n.d.” in place of the year. Undated entries from the same author are labeled n.d.-a and n.d.-b.
No author	The title moves to the author position and the entry is alphabetized by the first significant word of the title, skipping “A,” “An” and “The.”
Group author	Alphabetize by the full name of the organization, for example “National Cancer Institute” under N, not under an abbreviation.
Different authors with the same surname	Sort by first initial: Lee, A. B. comes before Lee, C. D.

The a/b letters are assigned after you put the entries in order, so sort first and letter second. That is also why two same-year entries by one author are ordered by title and not by which one you read first.

APA reference page example

This sample shows the label, the hanging indent, the double spacing and the alphabetical order working together. It uses the five source types covered in the next section: a book chapter, a news webpage, a journal article, a book and a report. The entries come from APA’s own reference examples.

Notice that the author names alone decide the order here: Aron, Bologna, Grady, Jackson, then National Cancer Institute. Each DOI or URL ends its entry with no period after it.

Reference formats for the most common sources

Every APA citation in the reference list answers four questions: who wrote it, when, what it is called and where to find it. The patterns below apply that order to the five sources that fill most student reference lists. If you would rather not assemble each entry by hand, the APA citation generator builds them from a URL, DOI or title.

Source	Pattern	What to watch
Journal article	Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article in sentence case. Journal Name in Title Case, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxxx	Italicize the journal name and the volume, not the issue. No comma between volume and issue.
Book	Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book in sentence case (2nd ed.). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx	Add the edition in parentheses after the title when it is not the first. Leave off the publisher’s location.
Chapter in an edited book	Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. pages). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx	The editors’ initials come before their surnames after “In,” and the book title is the italic part.
Webpage	Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL	Skip the site name when it matches the author. Use “n.d.” when the page has no date.
Report	Group or Author. (Year). Title of report (Report No. xxx). Publisher. URL	When the author and publisher are the same organization, omit the publisher. Put the report number in parentheses after the title.

For book entries in more depth, including editors, translations and later editions, see the guide on how to cite books. Article entries are covered in how to cite an article in an essay, and website entries in how to cite a website in an essay.

DOIs and URLs: what goes at the end of an entry

The DOI or URL is the last element of most entries, and it is where small slips pile up. APA’s page on DOIs and URLs settles each case.

Case	What to do
The work has a DOI	Include it, even if you read the print version. Write it as a link: https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185.
Both a DOI and a URL	Give only the DOI.
A URL but no DOI	Give the URL, as long as it will work for readers. Copy it from the browser bar and do not change it.
A print work with no DOI	Give neither a DOI nor a URL.
A link behind a login or database	Skip the database URL. Cite the work without a link, or use the publisher’s stable page if one exists.
An old-style DOI, such as doi:10.1037/xxxx	Convert it to https://doi.org/10.1037/xxxx. The “https://doi.org/” prefix turns the DOI into a link.
“Retrieved from” before the link	Drop it. The link leads straight to the work, so APA does not require it.
A period after the link	Leave it off. A final period can break the link.

If a DOI fails to resolve, paste it into the search box at doi.org and check for a typo before you give up on it. When the DOI is truly dead, fall back to the publisher’s URL for the article.

When the author, date or title is missing

A source with a gap is still citable. APA’s table of missing reference information moves the remaining elements into place and keeps the entry in its right spot in the alphabet.

Missing element	Entry pattern	In-text citation
Author	Title. (Date). Source.	(Title, year)
Date	Author. (n.d.). Title. Source.	(Author, n.d.)
Title	Author. (Date). [Description of work]. Source.	(Author, year)
Author and date	Title. (n.d.). Source.	(Title, n.d.)
Source	No reference entry. Cite as a personal communication or find another work.	(C. C. Communicator, personal communication, month day, year)

Do not write “Anonymous” as the author unless the work is actually signed that way. If it is not, the title takes the author’s place.

Common mistakes on the APA reference page

Mistake	Fix
Headed “Works Cited” or “Bibliography”	Use “References,” bold and centered, with no quotation marks or underline.
Entries listed in the order they appear in the paper	Sort alphabetically by the first word of each entry.
Hanging indent missing or set to the wrong size	Apply a 0.5 inch hanging indent through the paragraph settings, not with the space bar or Tab.
Single-spaced entries or a blank line between them	Double-space the whole list and add no extra space between entries.
Title Case on article and book titles	Use sentence case for the title and Title Case for the journal name.
Wrong italics	Italicize book and report titles, journal names and volume numbers. Leave article titles plain.
“Retrieved from” or a closing period after the link	Show the bare link with nothing before or after it.
Three or more authors cut down to “et al.” in the list	Keep “et al.” for in-text citations. In the reference entry, list up to 20 authors.
Cited in the text but missing from the list, or the reverse	Cross-check both directions before you submit.

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