LibGuides: APA Referencing: Reference List

Reference list vs. Bibliography

APA referencing has a reference list.

The reference list starts on a separate page at the end of your work
It comes before any appendices
The title is References which has a capital, is bold and centred
It is arranged alphabetically by author
It provides all the information required to identify and locate each source you have quoted, paraphrased or summarised in your assignment or research
All entries should have a corresponding in-text citation. That means you only include sources you have quoted or paraphrased (cite what you sight)
The entire reference list is double spaced (between and within references)
It uses hanging indentation, where the first line is hard against the margin and subsequent lines are indented (see the hanging indentation guide)

A bibliography is a list of all resources used when undertaking research. This might include material that you did not specifically quote or paraphrase, but was background reading that supported your ideas and conclusions. APA referencing does not have bibliographies.

An example of a reference list

Elements of a Reference list

A reference has 4 elements.

Author/Editor (Who). Date (When). Title (What). Source (Where)

Carter, P. (2020). This is us: New Zealanders in our words. Exisle Publishing.

Author

One author	Dwyer, J.
Two authors	Warne, K., & Quinn, P. J.
Three to twenty authors	Lewis, J., DePasquale, P. J., & Chase, J.
Twenty-one or more authors	Smith, J. T., Brown, A., Jones, H., White, B., Pene, G., Chen, T., Kingi, R., Lee, K., Singh, T., Patel, C., McDonald, R., Nikau, G., Rawiri, G., Reid, S., Seufale, D., Vi, W., Tilo, B., Anderson, P., Cross, M., … Hughes, B.
Group author	Ministry of Health.
No author	Title moves to author position followed by year of publication
Anonymous	Anonymous. (2019).

Surname first, followed by the initials for the first and middle names. Put a full stop after the initial. Add a space if followed by a middle initial
List surnames in the same order as they appear on the source
Put a comma after the surname
Put a comma after each author
Put the symbol for and (&) before the last author
Twenty-one or more authors: List the first 19 authors followed by ... then the last author
If the author is unknown, move the title to the author position
If the work explicitly states that the author is Anonymous, use this as the name. Place in alphabetical order by the word Anonymous

Date

The date refers to the date of publication. It is in parentheses ( ). Use more specific dates for works that are published more frequently. Most references include only the year of publication. The date can be written in one of the following ways:

Books: Year only. Use the copyright date shown on the book's copyright page
Academic journals: Year only (2020). Use the year of the volume
Magazines and newspapers: Daily (2021, May 24). Monthly (2021, May). Season (2021, Autumn).
Webpages: The most specific date possible (2019, January 23). Use the date or updated date for the content you are using. Do not use the copyright date from a webpage or website footer because this date may not indicate when the information on the webpage was published
No date: (n.d.). If no separate date of publication is obvious on the webpage, use (n.d.).
In press: If a work has been accepted for publication, but is not yet published, use in press instead of a year

Title

Titles of stand-alone works use italics e.g. books, reports, webpages, journals, newspapers, magazines
Titles that are part of a greater whole do not use italics e.g. chapters of edited books, journal articles
Most titles use sentence case, where there is a capital letter for the first word of the main title, the first word of the subtitle and any proper nouns (name of person, place, organisation etc)
Journal, magazine and newspaper titles use title case. The main words have capital letters, the minor words (3 letters or smaller) do not have capital letters

Source

For a book this is the publisher. Do not include business information for the publisher e.g. Co. Ltd. Inc. etc, but keep Books, Press, Publications, Publishing etc. When the author and the publisher are the same, omit the publisher from the reference to avoid repetition. Include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) if available
For journal articles this is the journal title, volume, issue, page number and DOI if available
For webpages this is the website name and the URL. When the author and the website name are the same, omit the site name from the reference to avoid repetition

If there is missing information

Missing element	Reference list entry	In text citation
Author	Title. (Date). Source.	(Title, year). or Title (year)...
Date	Author. (n.d.). Title. Source.	(Author, n.d.).or Author (n.d.)...
Title	Author. (Date). [Description of the work]. Source	(Author, year). or Author (year)...