APA 7 referencing — the UK guide

When to use APA 7

APA 7 is the standard across UK psychology, education, and many health-science departments. It was released by the American Psychological Association in October 2019 and replaces APA 6. Most UK universities have moved to APA 7 by now; check your handbook before submitting.

In-text citations

APA 7 uses author-date, like Harvard, but with stricter punctuation rules. Three patterns:

• Parenthetical: Working memory has limited capacity (Baddeley, 2012).
• Narrative: Baddeley (2012) argued that working memory has limited capacity.
• Direct quote: “Working memory has a hard capacity limit” (Baddeley, 2012, p. 14).

Key APA 7 change vs APA 6: for three+ authors, use et al. from the first citation onwards (no longer “list all on first citation”). For two authors, always use both.

Reference list — common source types

Book

Baddeley, A. (2012). Working memory, thought, and action (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Note: APA 7 drops the publisher location entirely. Just the publisher name.

Journal article with DOI

Patel, R., & Khan, S. (2022). Cognitive load in adolescent learners. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(3), 412–429. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000712

Note: DOI is now a full URL (https://doi.org/...). Volume is italicised but issue number is not.

Edited book chapter

Jones, A. (2020). Reading in the age of distraction. In B. Brown (Ed.), Modern literacies (pp. 45–67). Cambridge University Press.

Website

Office for National Statistics. (2023, May 12). Higher education statistics 2022/23. https://www.ons.gov.uk/...

Webpage of a larger website

NHS. (2023, March 1). Symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder. NHS UK. https://www.nhs.uk/...

Formatting rules everyone gets wrong

• Hanging indent: first line flush left, all subsequent lines of each reference indented 0.5 inch. Required.
• DOI as URL: APA 7 changed this — write https://doi.org/10.xxxx, not just doi:10.xxxx.
• Et al. from first citation: three+ authors get et al. from the very first time you cite them.
• No location for publishers: APA 6 wanted “New York, NY: Routledge”; APA 7 just wants “Routledge”.
• Title case vs sentence case: book and article TITLES are sentence case (only first word capitalised); JOURNAL names are title case.

Quick-reference card

Element	Format
In-text (1 author)	(Smith, 2021)
2 authors	(Smith & Jones, 2021)
3+ authors	(Smith et al., 2021) — from first citation
Quote	(Smith, 2021, p. 47)
Multiple sources	(Jones, 2019; Smith, 2021) — alphabetical
No date	(Smith, n.d.)

Related guides: Harvard · Vancouver · How to write a literature review