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APA 7th Edition: Common Errors in Citation

When creating your reference list, it is important to double check all of your citations to ensure they are properly referenced and formatted. In order to help you properly cite your materials, go through the following checklist to ensure you do not have any of the following errors:

  1. Check your spelling. Everything should be spelled correctly, such as author names and source titles.
  2. Check your punctuation. Punctuation should be appropriately placed within the reference including periods, commas, and parentheses.
  3. Check the text case. Italic case should only be used for specific aspects of a reference, such as book titles and academic journals titles.
  4. Check your capitalization. Source titles should be written in sentence case (e.g., Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace). Periodical titles should be written in title case (e.g., Harvard Law Review). 
  5. Check for links. All online resources should include DOIs for journal articles or URLs for websites.
  6. Check the full reference format.
    1. Note: A shortcut for creating hanging indents in Microsoft Word is highlighting the reference and hitting the key “control” and “t” keys simultaneously.
  7. Check for accuracy. Make sure you provide the relevant materials for the source cited, such as a year, month, and day for newspaper articles (e.g., 2014, December 28), but only a year for journal articles.

 

For more information on reference lists, review the information found under APA 7th Edition: References.

 

In addition to the Nool APA Resources, check out what APA has to say about referencing.