 APA, Building a References List You've done your research and you have lots of high quality articles, books, and websites to put on your reference list. We all know that references in APA are fussy and take time, but they are really important because they list all of the sources you use when writing your paper. Here are 7 tips to help you do a great references list. Tip number 1. Use an APA guide. APA guides list the rules for citation and show examples you can use. Tip number 2. If something is on your references list, it should also appear somewhere earlier in your assignment as an in-text citation. An in-text citation usually follows a quote, fact, or idea, and it looks like this. The in-text citations match the full citations found on the reference list. Tip 3. Use the right parentheses, commas, and italics. Here's an example of a citation for a journal article. See all the parentheses and commas in italics? Those need to be in the right place and it changes depending on what you're citing. So think back to tip 1. Use an APA guide. Tip 4. Start your references list on a new page at the end of your assignment, with the word references centered and bolded at the top. Tip 5. Organize your list in alphabetical order by the first word of the citation. Usually that's the author's last name, but it may be the name of an organization or association in the case of websites. Tip 6. If a citation is more than one line, every line but the first is indented. It looks like this. This is called a hanging indent. Don't worry, you can set this up automatically in Microsoft Word. Tip 7. Don't forget the entire list should be double spaced. You should now have a better sense of how to write a reference list in APA style.