9 November 2026

APA Citation Checker: The APA 7 Checklist for Your Paper

APA mistakes rarely sink a paper on their own. But they add up, and they're the easiest points you'll ever get back, because APA is fully defined in advance. Your argument is a judgment call. Your reference list isn't.

This checklist follows the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual, the version most US colleges use. Go through it once with your paper open, top to bottom.

Before you start: check the edition

Most instructors expect APA 7, but some departments still use APA 6. The rules below changed between the two (et al., publisher locations and running heads, among others). If your syllabus doesn't say, ask. Mixing editions is one of the most common reasons a "correct" reference gets marked wrong.

In-text citations

Every in-text citation needs the author's last name and the year. Check each one for these rules from the APA Style website:

• One author: (Nguyen, 2021) or Nguyen (2021).
• Two authors: (Nguyen & Patel, 2021) in parentheses, but Nguyen and Patel (2021) in your sentence. Use "&" only inside parentheses.
• Three or more authors: first author plus "et al." from the very first citation: (Nguyen et al., 2021). This is the APA 7 rule most papers still get wrong.
• Direct quotes: add a page number: (Nguyen, 2021, p. 14). Use "pp." for a range and a paragraph number ("para. 3") when there are no pages.
• Group authors: spell out the organization's name. If it has a well-known abbreviation, give it the first time: (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020), then (APA, 2020).
• No date: use "n.d.": (Nguyen, n.d.).
• Several sources at once: order them alphabetically and separate them with semicolons: (Adams, 2019; Nguyen, 2021).

Then do the most important check of all: every in-text citation has a reference list entry, and every entry is cited at least once. Search your document for each author's name. A citation with no matching entry is the error professors notice fastest.

Your reference list

Check the page itself first:

• Starts on a new page with the title References, bold and centered.
• Double-spaced, with a 0.5-inch hanging indent on every entry.
• Sorted alphabetically by the first author's last name.

Then check each entry against the APA reference rules:

• Authors: last name and initials, up to 20 authors. For 21 or more, list the first 19, an ellipsis, then the last author.
• Article titles in sentence case: only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns are capitalized.
• Journal names in title case and italics, with the volume number in italics and the issue number in parentheses, not italics: Journal of Learning Sciences, 32(4), 201–219.
• DOIs as links: https://doi.org/10.xxxx, not "doi:" and not "Retrieved from".
• Books: no publisher location. APA 7 dropped it.
• Websites: include a retrieval date only when the page is designed to change, like a live dashboard.

The title page (student papers)

APA 7 has a simpler title page for student papers. Check that yours has:

• Paper title (bold, centered, in the upper half of the page)
• Your name
• Your department and school
• Course number and name
• Instructor's name
• Due date
• Page number in the top right corner

Student papers don't need a running head in APA 7 unless your instructor asks for one.

The two checks a checklist can't do

A checklist catches formatting. It can't tell you whether a source exists or whether it says what you claim. Both matter more than any comma. Our citation checker guide shows how to verify each source by hand.

PickyProf does both in one pass. It checks that APA is applied the same way throughout your paper, that every in-text citation matches an entry in your reference list, and that each source can actually be found. You get each problem flagged where it happens, with what to change.

Want your APA checked before your professor does? Upload your paper to PickyProf and get every citation problem flagged, along with feedback on your argument and structure.

Read next

• Citation Checker: How to Make Sure Every Source in Your Paper Is Real

Jordan Mungujakisa

/ Software Developer

BEng in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering