How to Format an APA Reference Page (APA 7th Edition)

An APA reference page is the alphabetical list of every source you cited in your paper, placed on its own page at the very end of the document. In APA 7th edition, this page follows a tight set of formatting rules: the word “References” centered and bold at the top, entries in alphabetical order, a hanging indent on every entry, double spacing throughout, and DOIs presented as full https URLs. This guide walks through each rule and gives worked examples for a book, a journal article, and a website so you can format your reference list with confidence. If you would rather automate the layout, the APA citation generator builds correctly formatted entries for you.

The basic page setup

The reference page starts on a new page after the body of your paper. The title “References” appears at the top, centered and in bold, with no underlining, italics, or quotation marks. Use the same font as the rest of your paper (APA recommends accessible options such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Calibri, or 11-point Arial), and keep your one-inch margins on all sides.

Every line of the reference page is double-spaced, including within and between entries. Do not add extra blank lines between references. The page also continues the running page number in the top right corner, just like the rest of the document. For the broader rules on margins, headers, and title pages, see the full APA format guide.

Hanging indent

Each reference uses a hanging indent: the first line sits flush against the left margin, and every line after it is indented half an inch. This visual stagger makes it easy to scan author names down the left edge. In Microsoft Word or Google Docs, set this through the paragraph dialog rather than pressing the spacebar or tab key, which can break alignment. The dedicated hanging indent guide shows the exact menu steps for each program.

Alphabetical order and ordering rules

Entries are alphabetized letter by letter by the first element of each reference, which is usually the author’s surname. Ignore the words “A,” “An,” and “The” at the start of a title only when no author is available and you alphabetize by title instead. A few specific situations come up often:

• Same surname, different authors: alphabetize by first initial. Brown, A. comes before Brown, T.
• Single-author vs. multi-author: a single-author entry comes before a multi-author entry that begins with the same name. Kim, S. (2019) precedes Kim, S., & Lee, J. (2017).
• No author: move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of the title.
• Numerals: alphabetize numbers as if they were spelled out.

Because the reference list and your APA in-text citations must match, every source cited in the text needs an entry here, and every entry here must be cited at least once in the text.

Multiple works by the same author

When one author has several works, list them by year, earliest first. If the same author published two works in the same year, add lowercase letters (a, b, c) after the year and order them alphabetically by title. For example, Patel, R. (2020a). Coastal ecology. would come before Patel, R. (2020b). Wetland recovery. These letters also appear in the matching in-text citations, such as (Patel, 2020a). Works with no date use “n.d.” and are placed before works with a year.

DOIs and URLs

In APA 7, a DOI is formatted as a full clickable link beginning with https://doi.org/ followed by the number. You no longer write “doi:” or “Retrieved from” before it. If an online source has no DOI but does have a stable URL, include the URL as is. Do not add a period after a DOI or URL, since a trailing period can become part of the broken link. You generally do not include a retrieval date unless the content is designed to change over time, such as a live map or a wiki page.

Worked examples

The examples below use placeholder authors and example.com or example.org links. The same source rendered in MLA and Chicago is shown for comparison so you can see how the reference page differs across styles. To build any of these automatically, try the MLA citation generator or the Chicago citation generator.

Book

For more on book entries, including chapters and edited volumes, see how to cite a book and how to cite a chapter in a book.

Journal article with a DOI

Notice that APA uses sentence case for the article title while MLA and Chicago use title case. For a deeper look, read how to cite a journal article.

Website

Web sources have the most variation in date and author handling, so see how to cite a website, a source with no author, and a source with no date.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Calling it a bibliography. In APA the page is titled “References,” not “Bibliography” or “Works Cited.” See works cited vs. bibliography vs. references for the distinction.
• Title case on article titles. APA uses sentence case for article, chapter, and webpage titles, capitalizing only the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon.
• Adding “Retrieved from” or “doi:”. APA 7 dropped both. Just paste the clean https URL or DOI link.
• Manual indenting. Using tabs or spaces instead of a real hanging indent breaks alignment when text reflows.
• Listing uncited sources. The reference page is not a reading list; include only sources you actually cited.
• Wrong author order. Keep authors in the order shown in the source, and never alphabetize within a single entry’s author list.

Final tips

Once your entries are formatted, do a final pass to confirm three things: the list is alphabetized, every entry has a hanging indent, and each in-text citation has a matching reference. If you are switching between assignments in different styles, the comparison in APA vs. MLA and the overview in citation styles explained can save you from mixing rules. A clean, consistent reference page signals careful scholarship and helps readers find every source you relied on, so it is worth the few extra minutes to get the details right.