There are 114 different reference citation formats in APA seventh edition.
So your options are to memorize them. Use a Citation Machine. Better.
Or use this simple method that I'm about to show you right now.
In APA, references begin on a new page at the end of your paper. Type the word References on the very top line and center it. All the references
that follow are double spaced, in alphabetical order, and use hanging indentation.The basic format is: Author last name and first initial,
publication date, source title in sentence capitalization (and that means you capitalize only the first word of the title or subtitle and any
proper noun. Then comes publication information, if the source was part of a larger publication such as a journal, and finally comes
the online retrieval information. Because there are so many difference reference citation formats, you need a method to get them right.
We recommend following these three steps: First, identify the type of source you are citing: journal, magazine, website article, ebook,
government report and so on. Second, go to a reliable source such as the UMUC Library and find the matching example. Third, use the
example as a template to create your own reference citation with the information that you have gathered.
We'll be using a split screen for this workshop.
On one side are the templates from a reputable source.
Let's go to the library at the University of Maryland Global Campus.
Search on UMGC library APA citation examples.
Once on this page, look under In-Text Citations for the 14 categories of reference citations.
On the other side of the screen, we'll be composing our reference citation based upon the source that we found.
Okay, first we identify the type of source we found.
Our options are the five types of articles, books, ebooks, websites, classroom materials,
academic papers, reports, dissertations,
images and graphics, videos, personal communications, social media and business sources.
Looking at the source we found in the library, it's identified as an academic journal.
We can confirm this with a quick Google search on the journal title, Human Rights Law Review.
So let's pull up the reference citation template for an academic journal.
There is a generic format. But look at this specific example below.
This is the one we want to follow. First comes the author or authors' names.
We have only one author, so let's put that in. Last name, comma, first initial or initials, period.
Next is the year of publication in parentheses.
This article was published in 2017, followed by a period after the parentheses.
Next is the full title of the article.
Notice that our model tells us to use sentence capitalization,
which means you only capitalize the first word of a title or subtitle, and any proper noun.
In our source, we have only a main title, Torreggianni and Prison Overcrowding in Italy.
Only Torreggiani and Italy are capitalized, followed by a period.
Next comes the title of the publication in italics. Human Rights Law Review, followed by a comma.
Then comes the volume number also italicized.
Volume number is followed by the issue number, which is not in italics and has no space before it.
After a comma come the page numbers, 153 to 173.
At the end is the DOI. Notice that you'll need to add https colon, forward slash forward slash, doi.org. forward slash.
Now carefully entered the DOI numbers and letters.
There is no period at the end because this is a hyperlink.
Do a quick check for accuracy. And Congrats. You have a perfect APA reference citation.