Creating a Reference list

Core Elements

Your responsibility is to include all the elements you can find in the order listed below. The elements are:

1. Author. -->The author(s) of the work.  For multiple authors, list their names in the same order they appear in the work.  APA Style uses each author's last name and initials in the following order: authorlastname, initals. 

• One author:

  • Thompson, A.

• Two - seven authors:

  • Goderich, F, & Oakman, M.

  • Goderich, F.,  Oakman, M., & Thompson, A.

• Eight authors or more: 

  • Include the first six followed by ellipsis and the name of the last author

2. Publication date ()

• In a bracket, provide the year the work was published.

  • Thompson, A. (2018).

• For periodicals, provide full date given (month day, year)

  • Thompson, A. (April 18, 2018).

• Indicate if no date is given (n.d.).

  • Thompson, A. (n.d.).

3. Title of source. -->Title of the work. Subtitles are included after the main title.

• Capitalization of titles

  • Use sentence capitalization for all titles except periodicals. For journals, newspapers, capitalize all the main words

    • A pocket style manual

    • APA publication manual

    • Sports Illustrated

    • Globe and Mail

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author C. C. (year). Title of article.

4. Additional titles, -->This is the name of the journal, website, newspaper, etc. that contains the work,

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author C. C. (year). Title of article. Title of the Periodical, 

5. Publication information, -->

• • Periodicals: the volume and issue number of a journal (if provided). Volume is italicized.

    • Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author C. C. (year). Title of article. Title of the Periodical, xx, p - pp.

  • Nonperiodicals (books): provide the location and publisher

    • Author, A. A. (year). Title of book. Location: Publisher.

6. Locator information. --> This refers to the URL or doi

• • If a doi is provided, no other locator information is required.

  • It is not necessary to include database information

  • If using a URL, make sure it is a persistent URL (will not change) or link to the home page of the journal or publisher.

Check with your teachers. Many teachers will ask for the URL so they can access your sources quickly.

APA and AI

How to cite AI is evolving as different platforms and processes are developed.  There are two main things to consider when citing APA. 

• First, because your reader cannot access the results, you need to provide them for the reader. This can be done by providing the full text of the response in an appendix, supplementary material, or by including the prompt used in the body of the text. 

• Include the citation in your Reference page using the same pattern you would with other online sources and include the model description:

Name of Company. (Date). Name of plaform (model) [Large language model]. URL.

See the APA Style Guide for more information.