APA style calls its end-of-paper source list “References,” not “Works Cited.” That distinction matters because instructors and automated formatting checkers will flag the wrong label. The formatting rules come from the APA Publication Manual, 7th edition, and once you understand the basic template, most sources follow the same pattern: author, date, title, source.
Setting Up the References Page
Start your reference list on a new page after the body of your paper. Center the word “References” in bold at the top. Do not use “Works Cited,” “Bibliography,” or “Reference List” as your heading. If you only cited one source, you can use the singular “Reference” instead.
Double-space the entire list, with no extra space between entries. Each entry gets a hanging indent: the first line sits flush with the left margin, and every line after it is indented 0.5 inches. In most word processors, you can set this under paragraph formatting rather than pressing Tab manually, which keeps everything aligned if your text reflows.
Arrange entries alphabetically by the first author’s last name. If a source has no author, alphabetize by its title, ignoring articles like “A,” “An,” or “The.”
The Four-Part Template
Nearly every APA reference follows the same skeleton:
- Author. Last name first, then first and middle initials. Separate multiple authors with commas, and place an ampersand (&) before the final name.
- Date. The year of publication in parentheses, followed by a period.
- Title. The title of the work. Capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns.
- Source. Where the reader can find it: a journal name and volume, a publisher, or a URL.
Learning this skeleton is more useful than memorizing individual examples, because every source type is just a variation on these four elements.
Journal Articles
Journal articles are the most common source in academic papers. The template looks like this:
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy
The journal title and volume number are italicized. The issue number sits in parentheses right after the volume number, with no space between them, and is not italicized. If the article has a DOI (a permanent digital identifier), include it as a full URL at the end. Do not put a period after a DOI or URL.
Books
For a book with a single publisher, the format is straightforward:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name.
Italicize the book title. If the publisher and author are the same (common with organizations that publish their own reports), omit the publisher name to avoid repeating it. For edited books, place “(Ed.)” or “(Eds.)” after the editor names in place of the author slot.
Websites and Online Sources
For a webpage with an individual author:
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. https://www.example.com/page
Include the full date if one is available. The site name appears in plain text after the title, which is italicized. If the author and the site name are the same (for example, an organization writing on its own site), skip the site name.
Citing ChatGPT and Other AI Tools
If you used ChatGPT or another generative AI tool, you need both a reference entry and an explanation of how you used it somewhere in your paper, typically in your introduction or methods section. Include the prompt you gave the tool and the relevant portion of its response.
The reference entry treats the company behind the model as the author:
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
The version label goes in parentheses after the italicized model name, and a bracketed descriptor like “Large language model” follows. Use the year of the version you accessed. The in-text citation is simply (OpenAI, 2023) for a parenthetical citation or OpenAI (2023) for a narrative one.
In-Text Citations That Match Your References
Every source on your references page needs at least one in-text citation in your paper, and every in-text citation needs a matching reference. APA uses two citation styles:
Parenthetical citations place the author and year in parentheses at the end of the sentence: “Social media use correlates with increased anxiety in adolescents (Smith, 2022).” Both the author’s last name and the year appear, separated by a comma.
Narrative citations work the author’s name into the sentence itself, with only the year in parentheses: “Smith (2022) found that social media use correlates with increased anxiety in adolescents.” You can also fold both the name and year into the sentence without parentheses when it reads naturally: “In 2022, Smith found that social media use correlates with increased anxiety in adolescents.”
For works with two authors, include both names every time. For three or more authors, use only the first author’s name followed by “et al.” from the very first citation onward.
When Information Is Missing
Not every source gives you a clean author, date, and title. APA has specific substitutions for each gap:
- No author: Move the title into the author position. In your in-text citation, use a shortened version of the title. Do not write “Anonymous” unless the work is literally signed “Anonymous.”
- No date: Replace the year with “n.d.” (short for “no date”) in both the reference entry and the in-text citation.
- No title: Describe the work in square brackets where the title would go. For example: [Photograph of a solar eclipse].
These substitutions keep the four-part template intact so readers can still locate the source.
Formatting Tips in Word Processors
Setting up hanging indents manually is a common source of frustration. In Google Docs, highlight your reference list, go to Format > Align & indent > Indentation options, and set Special indent to “Hanging” at 0.5 inches. In Microsoft Word, right-click the selected text, choose Paragraph, and under Special select “Hanging” with a 0.5-inch value. This approach keeps your formatting stable even if you add or remove references later.
Make sure your entire document, including the references page, is set to the same double spacing with no additional space before or after paragraphs. Many word processors add extra spacing between paragraphs by default, which will make your reference list look unevenly spaced even when the line spacing is technically correct. Set the before and after paragraph spacing to 0 pt to fix this.