APA Style (6th ed.)

Reference List

A reference list usually appears at the end of your assignment. This includes all the references that you have cited in your document.

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Bibliography

A Bibliography is sometimes also used. This can contain references that you have consulted during the course of your research, but not actually cited in the text of your assignment. These reference sources may be of interest to the reader. This is usually for larger documents such as theses or books.

• All lines after the first line of each reference in the Reference List should be indented half an inch from the left margin

 

 

• Arrange reference entries in alphabetical order by the surname of the first author or organisational name, or by the first word of the title if there is no author. Ignore the words A, An, and the when alphabetising by title.

 

 

• Use only the initial(s) of the author’s christian name, with one space between each initial.

 

 

• Show all authors' names up to seven names, with the last author name preceded by an ampersand (&). If you have more than seven authors in your source, you should list the first six names, then use an ellipsis (...) and list the name of the last author of the source (no ampersand is required).

 

 

• For a book, only the first letter of the first word of the title and subtitle (if there is one) and any proper nouns are capitalised in the reference list. The book title is italicised.

 

 

• Journal titles should use capitalisation of each major word in the title and are italicised.

 

 

• Year of Publication is shown in brackets followed by a full stop. If no date can be determined for the source, use (n.d.) in place of the year to indicate no date.

 

 

• Edition is abbreviated to ed. and in round brackets with a full stop after the brackets. The first edition of a book is never indicated.

 

 

• Place of publication: use only the first city mentioned when there are multiple places of publication listed on the source. If it is an American place of publication, give the name of the city and abbreviated state (see below for abbreviations); for all other locations outside the USA, provide the city and country. 

 

 

• If you can't find the publisher, write (s.n.) to indicate that the publisher is unknown (sine nomine).