Reference Lists (9.4)
Reference Lists (9.4)
A reference list appears at the end of an essay or other assignment, and it provides all of the information necessary to identify and retrieve each work cited in the text (9.0). This means that whoever is reading the work, including an instructor who is marking an assignment, can look at the sources that were used, which can help them to understand the assignment and mark it more accurately.
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Hint! More information on citing specific kinds of resources in the text and on the reference list can be found in Chapter 6 of this manual.
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There are specific formatting requirements for reference pages. These are found in section 2.13 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (the Publication Manual), and they are summarized below:
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- The reference list starts on a new page after the text, and before any tables, figures, or appendices.
- The page is labelled “References”, capitalized, bolded, and centered.
- All reference list entries are double-spaced.
- A hanging indent is used for all reference list entries. This means that the first line of each reference list entry is flush left, and the remaining lines are indented 0.5 inches. Many word processing programs have paragraph formatting tools to help with this.
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Hint! To create a hanging indent in Microsoft Word, select or highlight the line you want to indent and then hold down the Ctrl and T keys.
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How do I cite a specific kind of resource?
More information on citing specific kinds of resources in the text and on the reference list can be found in Chapter 6 of this manual.
What’s Next?
In the next chapter, you’ll find information on citing different kinds of resources.
Sources
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style. (7th ed.).
A reference list appears at the end of an assignment or essay, and it contains all of the reference list entries for information resources used for that assignment or essay.
Citing is the process of acknowledging the sources of information and ideas. This takes the form of a citation. Citations must include specific pieces of information and must follow a consistent format. There are two parts of a citation – the in-text citation, and the reference list entry.
Resources, sometimes called sources, are sources of information; this is where information is found when conducting research. This can sometimes lead to confusion, because one of the pieces of information in a reference list entry is also called a source.
A reference list entry is the information in a reference list at the end of an assignment or essay. Each source of information in an essay or assignment must have a reference list entry. An APA Style reference list entry includes author(s), a date, a title, and a source.
