LibGuides: APA Style 7th Edition: Reference List and Sample Papers

Sample Paper & Reference List

APA Sample Paper Template
This sample paper includes a title page, sample assignment page and references list in APA format. It can be used as a template to set up your assignment.

APA 7th Edition Student Sample Paper
This example from Idaho State University presents guidelines for student papers following the American Psychological Association (APA) Publication Manual 7th edition.
Student APA 7th Edition Sample Paper
Example of student APA 7th edition paper with notations from Antioch University Writing Center.

APA Headings
If your instructor requires you to use APA style headings and sub-headings, this document will show you how they work. This sample demonstrates and describes how to use different levels of headings in APA format.

End of Paper Checklist
Finished your assignment? Use this checklist to be sure you haven't missed any information needed for APA style.

Your research paper ends with a list of all the sources cited in the text of the paper. Here are nine quick rules for this Reference list.

Start a new page for your Reference list. Centre the title, References, at the top of the page.
Double-space the list.
Start the first line of each reference at the left margin; indent each subsequent line five spaces (a hanging indent).
Put your list in alphabetical order. Alphabetize the list by the first word in the reference. In most cases, the first word will be the author’s last name. Where the author is unknown, alphabetize by the first word in the title, ignoring the words a, an, the.
For each author, give the last name followed by a comma and the first (and middle, if listed) initials followed by periods.
Italicize the titles of these works: books, audiovisual material, internet documents and newspapers, and the title and volume number of journals and magazines.
Do not italicize titles of most parts of works, such as: articles from newspapers, magazines, or journals / essays, poems, short stories or chapter titles from a book / chapters or sections of an Internet document.
In titles of non-periodicals (books, videotapes, websites, reports, poems, essays, chapters, etc), capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, and all proper nouns (names of people, places, organizations, nationalities).
If a web source (not from the library) is not a stable archived version, or you are unsure whether it is stable, include a statement of the accessed date before the link.