I need to reference something in APA 7

Names are dealt with the same way for all reference formats.  The same approach applies to books, articles, reports etc.

Citing more than one author:

Two authors

Cite the authors in the order they appear in the source. 

For parenthetical citations names are linked with &:

(Abram & Karasavas, 2018)

For narrative citations names are linked with and;

Abram and Karasavas (2018)

Three or more authors

Just include the first, or lead author’s name and ‘et al.’ ‘et al.’  is short for et alia and means 'and others".

Dacre et al. (2020) or (Dacre et al., 2020)

Referencing more than one author

Put names in the same order they appear in the source. 

Up to 20 authors

List all the authors separated by commas except the last authors which are separated by &. 

Dacre, J., Woodhams, C., Atkinson, C., Laliotis, I., Williams, M., Blanden, J., Wild, S. & Brown, D. (2020).  Mend the gap: the independent review in gender pay gaps in medicine in England. Department of Health and Social Care. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-into-gender-pay-gaps-in-medicine-in-england

21 or more authors

Include the first 19 authors and the last author.  Separate the authors by commas and add ellipses (...) before the last author in the source.  You should list no more than 20 names. 

Tanabashi, M., Hagiwara, K., Hikasa, K., Nakamura, K., Sumino, Y., Takahashi, F., Tanaka, J., Agashe, K, Aella, G., Amsler, C., Antonelli, M, Asner, D. M., Baer, H., Banerjee, S., Barnett, R. M., Basaglia, T., Bauer, C. W., Beatty, J. J., Belousov, V., … Zyla, P. A. (2018). Review of particle physics. Physical Review D. 98(3). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.030001 

Note: there are no page numbers in the example above because articles in this journal are published online without continuous page numbers running through a volume or issue. 

A reference must reflect the source you use so there is nothing wrong with writing a reference or citation that is missing details that cannot be found in the original source. However missing information may reflect quality so consider your choice of source and your reason for using it if reference details are missing.  

• If there is no author, the title replaces the author in both references and citation. Use italics for the title as you would if the author was identified. I.E. use italics for a book title but not for a journal article title. 
• Titles are treated differently when used instead of an author in citations.
  • Capitalise titles in citations even though they are not fully capitalised in the reference
  • If the title is not italicised then place it in quote marks in citations.
• Cite and reference what you see, If a work is published as by Anonymous that is not the same as having no author and use Anonymous as the author.
• If there is no date use n.d. where you would usually put the year.  n.d. stands for no date. 
• If there is no title, briefly describe the work in square brackets where you would normally have the title in the reference.

More advice see section 11 of Your guide to referencing - how to use APA 7 edition.

Digital Object Identifiers can be used to identify any resource available in an electronic format.  Though they can look like web addresses they do not work the same way. DOIs do not specify where the content is accessed and so are better for sharing information with people who do not have access to the same services. 

You may see DOIs presented as a set of numbers and letters or with a prefix so that it looks like a web address,  

Basic DOI: 

10.4135/9781526430212   (The basic DOI always begins with 10.)

With Web Prefix:

https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526430212 (this is the current standard)

https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526430212  (this is an older example)

Whatever the DOI prefix looks like in your source, you should edit it to match the current standard as this is specified by both the APA and the International DOI Foundation that administers DOIs

Read the university's advice on assessing referencing for students and staff. 

Referencing and acknowledgement are often used interchangeably and this can cause confusion when using images in your creative work. In this guide we make the distinction between acknowledging the images you use (often part of the terms and conditions of using a copyright cleared image) and referencing and citing your sources, an essential part of academic writing.