APA Referencing for Nepali Students: The Guide TU and KU Actually Expect

5 July 2026 · 6 min read

TU, KU and PU almost all require APA style for theses, reports and assignments — but most students learn it from inconsistent examples and lose easy marks to mechanical errors. This guide covers the core rules plus the situations specific to studying in Nepal, like citing NRB reports or Nepali-language sources.

What APA means, in Nepali

APA stands for the American Psychological Association, the body that publishes the style. In Nepali it is simply written as APA शैली (APA style), because the name itself is not translated. When a TU, KU or PU brief says "use APA", it means the seventh edition unless it says otherwise: author-year citations in the text, such as (Shrestha, 2023), and an alphabetical reference list at the end.

In-text citations: the core rule

Every idea, statistic or quote from a source needs an author-year citation: (Shrestha, 2023). Direct quotes add a page number: (Shrestha, 2023, p. 45). Two authors are joined with an ampersand — (Karki & Thapa, 2022) — and three or more use et al. from the first citation: (Adhikari et al., 2021). If the author's name is part of your sentence, only the year goes in brackets: Shrestha (2023) found that...

The reference list

Alphabetical by author surname, hanging indent, and every in-text citation must appear here (and nothing extra). A journal article looks like: Shrestha, R. (2023). Article title in sentence case. Journal Name in Title Case, 12(3), 45–67. A book: Karki, S. (2022). Book title in sentence case. Publisher.

Citing sources common in Nepal

Government and institutional reports: Nepal Rastra Bank. (2024). Monetary policy report 2023/24. — the organisation is the author.
Nepali-language sources: give the title in romanised Nepali followed by an English translation in square brackets.
Newspaper articles: author, date, article title, and the newspaper name in italics (e.g., The Kathmandu Post).
Websites: include the full date if available and the URL — and prefer institutional sites over blogs as sources.

What these terms mean in Nepali

Students often meet these words in English for the first time in a brief and are not sure what is actually being asked for. The Nepali equivalents below are the ones used in Nepali-medium teaching, but note that your submission itself must use the English terms and the English style — the translation is to help you understand the instruction, not to replace it.

Citation — उद्धरण. Naming the source inside your sentence, so the reader knows the idea came from someone else.
In-text citation — पाठभित्रको उद्धरण. The short form in the body of your text: author surname and year, as in (Sharma, 2023).
Reference — सन्दर्भ. The full details of one source, given in the list at the end.
Reference list — सन्दर्भ सूची. The alphabetical list of every source you cited. In APA this is the required heading, not “Bibliography”.
Bibliography — ग्रन्थसूची. Everything you read, whether or not you cited it. APA does not use this; some other styles do.
Plagiarism — साहित्यिक चोरी. Presenting someone else’s work or words as your own, whether deliberately or by failing to cite.
Paraphrase — भावानुवाद. Restating an idea in your own words. It still needs a citation — this is the point most often misunderstood.
Quotation — उद्धृत अंश. Copying the exact words, which must sit inside quotation marks and carry a page number.

Style names are never translated. APA, MLA, Harvard, IEEE and Chicago all stay in English in Nepali writing too.

One consequence worth stating plainly: a paraphrase in Nepali of an English source is still a paraphrase, and still needs a citation. Translating a passage does not make it yours, and Turnitin’s database is not limited to English.

Errors that cost the most marks

In-text citations missing from the reference list, or references never cited in the text.
Mixing APA with another style — usually stray footnotes or numbered references.
Citing a textbook for a claim that needs a primary source.
Inconsistent formatting: some titles italicised, some not; some years bracketed, some not.

The fastest fix is a reference manager — Zotero is free, works with Word, and formats APA automatically. And if you want an expert to check the citations and reference list in your thesis or report before submission, Assignment Nepal can proofread it — message us on WhatsApp at +977 9768768340.

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