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APA 7 General Format

The following information is an abridged version of the style and formatting guidelines found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed. (2019). This sheet is to serve as a ready-reference; more in-depth descriptions can be found in the handbook.

APA 7 General Format Information

  • APA 7 distinguishes between two different types of papers: student and professional papers. This document will focus on student papers.
  • We recommend that you consult your course syllabus or professor for the format preferred or required in your course. If no format guidelines are specified or available, the following information provides one basic document format, abridged from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed. (2019), published by the American Psychological Association.

Title Page and Margins

  • APA style requires a title page. The title, author, and institution are centered in the upper half of the page.
  • All margins (top, bottom, left, and right) are set to 1” throughout the paper.

Title

The title of the paper is bolded and there is one line of space between the title and the rest of the information.

Spacing

The paper is double-spaced throughout, including the title page, all quotations, notes, and the reference page.

Header: Page Number

All pages in the paper, including the title page, are numbered consecutively in the upper right-hand corner of the header, .05” from the top and flush with the right margin.

Font

Acceptable fonts are sans serif fonts (such as Calibri, 11 pt., Arial 11 pt., Lucida Sans Unicode 10 pt.) or serif fonts (such as Times New Roman, 12 pt., Georgia, 10 pt.)

Title page of a document. At the right corner, a page number (1). Centered is a block of text. The top line is the title, bolded. Below it are lines for the person's name, their institute, their course number and course name, their professor, and the date.

Main Body Text

  • APA style requires an abstract, though your professor may not. If an abstract is required, it is put on page two of the paper, with the main body starting on page three. An abstract is a brief summary of your paper.

Headings

There are 5 heading levels:

  • Level 1: Centered, Boldface
  • Level 2: Flush left, boldface
  • Level 3: Flush left, boldface italic
  • Level 4: Indented, boldface, ending with a period
  • Level 5: Indented, boldface italic, ending with a period

Parenthetical Citations

APA-style citations should include the authors last name, publication date, and page number.

The second page of a document, immediately following the title page. At the top right corner is the page number (2). Just below that, the title appears, bolded and centered. Under that is the content of the document, featuring APA style citations headings.