APA 7 Reference Examples: Article, Book, Thesis and Web Page
APA style is one of the most widely used citation formats, from the social sciences to health sciences. This article gives ready-made reference-list examples for the most commonly needed source types according to the current 7th edition of APA.
Core APA 7 rules
- The reference list is alphabetical; each entry uses a hanging indent.
- Up to 20 authors are listed (the APA 6 “7 authors” limit is gone).
- If a DOI exists, give it as
https://doi.org/…; do not use the “doi:” prefix. - Journal articles do not include a publisher location; books no longer require a city either.
- In in-text citations, works with 3+ authors are shortened to “(Smith et al., 2023)” from the first use.
Journal article
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (2021). Title of the article in sentence case. Journal Name in Title Case, 12(3), 45–67. https://doi.org/10.1234/abcd.2021.045
The volume number is italic; the issue number is in parentheses and not italic.
Book
Author, A. A. (2020). Title of the book: Subtitle after the colon (3rd ed.). Publisher.
Book chapter
Author, A. A. (2019). Title of the chapter. In E. Editor & F. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book (pp. 101–125). Publisher.
Thesis / dissertation
Author, A. A. (2022). Title of the thesis [Doctoral dissertation, University Name]. Database/Repository Name. https://…
Web page
Author, A. A. (2023, March 15). Title of the page. Site Name. https://www.example.com/page
If there is no author, the organization name takes the author position; if there is no date, use (n.d.).
Conference paper
Author, A. A. (2021, September 10–12). Title of the paper [Paper presentation]. Conference Name, City, Country.
Common APA mistakes
- Capitalizing every word in the article title (only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized).
- Writing the journal name and volume number in roman (both should be italic).
- Writing the DOI as “doi:10.1234/…” (it should be https://doi.org/…).
- “and”/“&” confusion: in the reference list, use “&” before the last author.
- Adding a retrieval date (in APA 7 it is only needed for content that changes over time).
Convert your bibliography to APA 7 automatically
If your references are in another style or are inconsistent, instead of fixing them one by one, paste them into the Citation Checker tool: your sources are first verified for existence, then the verified records are automatically formatted into your chosen style, including APA 7. Formatting deviations (italics, order, DOI presentation…) are flagged separately.