How is apa format

Acta Inform Med. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 7th ed. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All.

Table of Contents. APA Format. Major Sections. In-Text Citations. Important Tips. Helpful Resources. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. There are two different versions of an APA title page : the student version and the professional version.

The student version should include:. For a professional APA paper, include:. For both student and professional papers, the paper title is in title case, bold, and centered. It should be about three to four lines down from the top margin of the page. Be concise. Your title should be a short statement of what the reader will find in the paper. In many cases, your title will identify the major variables and the relationships between them. For example, "Effect of Sleep Deprivation on Math Performance" is an example of a succinct title that clearly describes what the paper is about.

Avoid any extraneous words that do not add meaning to your title. Write the byline below the paper title. There should be one blank double-spaced line between the title and the byline. Place the affiliation below the byline. For professional papers, the author's note goes beneath the affiliation.

For students, the course name, instructor name, and due date will each get separate lines beneath the byline. An author note gives more information about the authors of the paper, study registration, data sharing, disclaimers on any conflicts of interest, and a point of contact. An author note would also mention any individuals or organizations that gave funding to support the research. For professional papers, put a running head at the top left of the page in all upper-case letters.

For both the student and professional versions of an APA paper, be sure the page number is on the top right of the page. Think of an abstract as a summary of your paper. If you are a student, your instructor may or may not require an abstract; be sure to check. Follow these tips for writing your abstract:. The "Publication Manual" states that a good abstract is accurate, coherent, and concise. Be sure not to include any information in the abstract that isn't in the paper itself.

Tables are an efficient way to display a great deal of information in a concise, clear, and easy-to-read format. In APA format papers, tables are generally used to describe the results of statistical analysis and other pertinent quantitative data. However, it is important to note that not all data should be presented in a table. If you have little numeric information to present, it should be described in the text of your paper.

The "Publication Manual" recommends designing your table with the reader in mind. Strive to communicate data in a way that is clear and easy to understand. Keep these tips in mind when using a table in your publication:. Remember that your table is there to supplement rather than replicate the text of your paper. Do not feel the need to discuss every element of your table in your text. Listing your keywords will help researchers find your work in databases. The page template for the new OWL site does not include contributors' names or the page's last edited date.

However, select pages still include this information. Purdue Online Writing Lab. Title of resource. General Writing FAQs. Contributors' names. Last edited date. Site Name. Title Page Note: APA 7 provides slightly different directions for formatting the title pages of professional papers e.

A student paper should not include an author note. Title page for a professional paper in APA 7 style.

Abstract page for a student paper in APA 7 style. APA Style papers should be written in a font that is legible and widely accessible.

For example:. The same font and font size is used throughout the document, including the running head , page numbers, headings , and the reference page. Text in footnotes and figure images may be smaller and use single line spacing. APA citations consist of an in-text citation and reference entry.

Each source type has its own format; for example, a webpage citation is different from a book citation. Yes, page numbers are included on all pages, including the title page , table of contents , and reference page. Page numbers should be right-aligned in the page header. APA format is widely used by professionals, researchers, and students in the social and behavioral sciences, including fields like education, psychology, and business.

Be sure to check the guidelines of your university or the journal you want to be published in to double-check which style you should be using. APA doesn't require you to number your headings or provide any formatting guidelines for this, but it's acceptable and quite common to do so, if you think it helps to clarify your structure.

When I click on the word document template everything is in Spanish. Is there something I am doing wrong? The template shouldn't be in Spanish. If you're referring to the Latin text in the document, that's just there as a placeholder, to give you an idea of how the text should be formatted.

You should of course replace it with your own text, in English! But let me know if that's not what you were referring to. One of my articles' author, refers to other researchers or thoughts by others in the field. So, how do I cite the source? Do I only include the author of the article I am reading? And finally, do you have to use actual Headers in the paper? Or can it just flow? Or do I need to write Intro the word , headers, findings, conclusion?

If any of that makes sense to you! Thank you so much! To cite the sources mentioned in a source you're reading, the best way is always to find the original source and cite it directly. You can probably find it in the bibliography of the source you're reading. But if you can't find or access it for some reason, you can follow the format explained in this FAQ to cite it indirectly. A chart or graph should usually be formatted and labeled as a figure. Then you'd refer to it in the text as "Figure 1" or whatever number it was.

You can read more about including tables and figures here. Headings are not mandatory; in shorter texts like a class paper they're often not used, though in a thesis or dissertation you would always use some sort of headings to break up the text.

Note that even if you do use headings, APA recommends against using an "Introduction" heading; they say that since the introduction always appears at the start, there's no need for a heading to mark it as such. Nothing missing per se, but I have a question Do all citations need to be done as in-text citations?

Thanks Kelly. You include an in-text citation whenever you quote or paraphrase a source in your text. Then all of the sources you cite are also listed on the reference page at the end of your paper.

You can read more about in-text citations here , and about the reference page here. There's no specific limit to how long your paragraphs can be in APA style; they suggest that if a paragraph is longer than one double-spaced A4 page, it risks "losing readers' attention," so it might be best to avoid paragraphs of that length.

In general, just try to start new paragraphs at logical points: when you start to address a new topic or develop a new part of your argument, for example.