APA 7
APA 7th Edition is the most commonly used referencing style here at the University of Portsmouth. Below you will find general guidance on how to reference and cite using APA 7th Edition, as well as examples for the specific sources you are likely to use in your assignments.
Your department or lecturer may prefer you to reference sources differently from the guidance given here. Always follow the requirements of your department or lecturer.
External visitors are welcome to use this guide, but note that your institution's requirements may differ from those suggested here.
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The following guidance is taken from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).
If your department or lecturer has provided their own guidance which differs from this, please check with them to ensure you submit what they require.
APA 7th edition does not require a specific font type or size. You should use the same font type and size for the reference list as you do in the main body of your work. Guidance for this is usually provided by departments.
- Start the reference list on a new page, after the end of your assignment / essay. Use the title 'References'. Center this title at the top of the page, and use bold.
- Double-space the reference list, both within and between references. Do not add extra lines between references.
- Order references alphabetically. For more information on this please see our guidance here.
- Apply a hanging indent for all references using the paragraph-formatting function of your word processing program. The first line of each reference should be flush left, and all subsequent lines indented to 1.27 cm (or 0.5 inches).
- Use sentence case within your references for titles of articles, books, reports, webpages, and other works, even if title case was used in the original work.
In sentence case, you use lower case for most words in a title or heading. Capitalize only the following words; the first word of the title or heading, the first word of a subtitle, the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading, nouns followed by numerals or letters, and proper nouns (such as the names of racial or ethnic groups).
- Within references, you should hyphenate words but not URLs or DOIs. URLs and DOIs can be spilt across lines without a hyphen in Microsoft Word by inserting a 'soft return', which is inserted by placing your cursor where you want the URL to break and pressing Shift + Return. This will retain the functioning link but enable your text to flow between lines in your list.
Click here to download a sample reference list showing how this formatting should look.
For guidance on formatting hanging indents in Microsoft Word (for Windows, Mac and Web), please click here.