The short answer
Centennial College uses APA 7th. Author-date, with tighter formatting rules than Harvard. Standard across psychology, nursing, education and most North American programmes. Marked hard on formatting as well as content. Submissions go through eCentennial (D2L Brightspace). Departments publish their own variants of the university style, so where your module handbook differs from the formats below, the handbook is what your marker checks against.
In-text citations in APA 7th
| Situation | What you write |
|---|---|
| One author | (Bell, 2021) |
| Two authors | (Bell & Okafor, 2021) |
| Three or more | (Bell et al., 2021) |
| Direct quote | (Bell, 2021, p. 44) |
| Narrative citation | Bell (2021) found that… |
Reference list entries
Book
Surname, I. (Year). Title in sentence case. Publisher.
Bell, J. (2021). Doing your research project (8th ed.). Open University Press.
Journal article
Surname, I. (Year). Article title. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxx
Okafor, A. (2020). Reflective practice in nursing. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(4), 612-620. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15234
Website
Organisation. (Year, Month Day). Page title. Site Name. URL
NHS England. (2024, January 15). Clinical governance framework. https://www.england.nhs.uk
What loses marks in APA 7th
Title case instead of sentence case
APA 7 uses sentence case for article and book titles: only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised. This is the single most common APA deduction.
Missing the DOI
APA 7 wants the DOI as a full https link where one exists. Leaving it off costs formatting marks.
Ampersand in the wrong place
Use & inside brackets, and the word "and" in running text. (Bell & Okafor, 2021) but "Bell and Okafor (2021) argue".
Where we come in
If you would rather hand the referencing to someone who does it daily, that is what we do. Work for Centennial students is written in APA 7th and matched to your module handbook, and nothing is charged until the finished work is with you.