The APA mistakes that cost easy marks.

The errors that appear in nearly every paper

Markers see the same mistakes so often they stop noting them individually and simply move the criterion down a band. None of these are difficult and all of them are habits.

• ✦Citing a source in the text that is missing from the reference list, or the reverse
• ✦Using an ampersand outside parentheses, or the word and inside them
• ✦Giving a page number for a paraphrase but omitting it for a direct quotation
• ✦Sentence case and title case swapped in reference entries
• ✦A hanging indent applied by pressing space instead of by paragraph settings
• ✦Secondary citations presented as though you had read the original

The secondary citation problem

This one matters beyond formatting. If you read a claim in one author quoting another, you have not read the original and must not cite it as though you had. The correct form names both, and it signals honestly that you are relying on somebody else's reading.

It is worth avoiding rather than formatting correctly. Finding the original takes ten minutes, frequently reveals that the quoting author simplified it, and produces a stronger paper. Markers who follow a secondary citation and find a misrepresentation form a lasting view of everything else in the paper.

Currency, when the rubric asks for it

Where a criterion says current sources, it usually means roughly the last five years, and this is a criterion rather than a preference. A decade-old citation is not weak support in that context, it is the wrong kind of support.

There are legitimate exceptions and they are worth stating explicitly rather than hoping. Seminal theoretical work, a foundational study everyone in the field cites, or a historical point that requires a contemporary source are all defensible. A sentence acknowledging why you are reaching back turns a suspected shortcut into a visible judgment.

Make the machine do the mechanical parts

Reference managers get the punctuation right and free you to check the things they cannot. What they get wrong is capitalisation from imported records, missing DOIs, and entries for sources that do not exist because the metadata was wrong.

So the workflow is: let the tool build the list, then read every entry once against the actual source. That final read is where the marks are protected, and it takes about a minute per reference.

Check the sources exist at all

This has become the most consequential item on the list. Fabricated references that look entirely plausible are now common, because generated bibliographies produce well-formed entries for papers that were never written.

A marker who clicks one and finds nothing is no longer having a conversation with you about formatting. Whatever tools you used, verify that every source is real, that you can reach it, and that it says what your sentence claims it says. Where you would rather that verification were somebody's standing habit, it is part of how work is prepared here — but on your own papers it is a ten-minute check that protects everything else.

Tell the guild your tale.

Name the course, the program and the date it is due. A mentor credentialed in that subject reads it and replies with counsel and a figure within two hours. The reading costs nothing, and sometimes the answer is an honest no.