APA Formatting: A Quick guide with Examples, tips, and illustrations

Have you ever missed important marks that otherwise affected your grade just because of poor APA formatting and citations? It could be in your essays, research paper, term papers, or other academic assignments. We can resonate with the feelings. It is awful and regrettable. Professors view such as silly mistakes that are otherwise avoidable.

Unfortunately, when reviewing the genesis of such bad grades, you will realize that it was a simple mistake. We’ve been here, done this, whined, and decided to emancipate others! Well, that’s our work anyway.

Gradecrest has expert writers who help college students with their essays. And during over a decade-long experience, we have always seen how college students and professionals have a rough time with APA formatting and citations. Most of the students we help have always expressed that they do not clearly understand APA formatting, even after the class introductions and tutorials.

APA formatting is challenging, especially that formatting styles have been changing. For instance, instead of the widely known and used APA6, there is APA7 introduced in 2019. Having completed and edited several APA papers, we share some tips through an APA format guide. If you follow the steps we discuss below, you will be kissing bad grades goodbye and embracing an A+ grade in your papers.

As a bonus, we will also discuss APA formatting for professional papers.

What is APA Format?

Before we delve into APA formatting and citation mechanics, let’s define what APA formatting means.

APA format is the official style of the American Psychological Association (APA) commonly used to cite sources when writing papers in social sciences such as psychology, economics, linguistics, social work, sociology, and criminology, among others. It is also used in Nursing and Business studies.

The intention of using standard formatting in APA is to formalize writing and help you give credit to all the sources you use when writing an essay, research paper, or any piece of assignment to avoid plagiarism.

Using the APA style, students and researchers can consistently communicate information about their ideas and findings from research. In addition, sticking to the standard APA style helps the readers know what to look for when reading a paper.

General Guidelines for APA Formatting and Writing Style

As you set out to write your assignment, essay, or report, consider these general elements of an APA paper:

You should type your paper in double space and on a standard-sized paper of (8.5″ x 11″), with 1″ margins on all sides.

APA recommends 12-point Times New Roman font for all papers. However, some instructors can allow 11-point Arial and 11-point Calibri fonts. Other sans serif fonts that are also accepted include 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode. You can also use 11-point Georgia or the 10-point Computer Modern.

The title page of an APA 7 paper contains the title of the paper, author’s name, institutional affiliation, course code and name, instructor’s name, and assignment due date

A title page for a professional paper often includes an author’s note.

The title in APA7 is written in title case, bolded, and centered.

The title should be succinct, clear, and should not have any abbreviations that serve no purpose.

The title should take one or two lines.

The entire paper has to be double-spaced with no spaces between paragraphs.

Every first word in each paragraph, except for the abstract, must be indented one-half inch.

Ensure that you format your paper this way at the very basic level before you even commence writing. However, nothing is cast in stone; you can do this any time, provided the paper is formatted in APA as a whole.

Major Sections of an APA Paper

You will realize that almost all assignments and papers done in APA format have the following major sections, although some, such as the abstract, are not mandatory in some papers:

Title page

Abstract

Main body

References

The sections of your paper depend on the instructions and requirements of your assignment. For instance, abstracts are mandatory in research papers, dissertations, thesis, proposals, reports, and term papers. These papers will additionally have appendices that come after the reference page. Some papers might also have a table of content, which like the title and reference pages, is never part of the total word count.

Most student essays (those submitted to colleges, universities, and high schools for grade) have the title page, main body, and reference sections.

APA Title Page

The title page, otherwise referred to as the cover page, comes as the first page in an APA-style paper. There are variations when using APA 6 and 7, respectively. Let us clarify.

If you are writing your paper in APA 6, your title page should contain

Page header aka. Running head

Your name

Name of your institution or school

Date your essay/assignment is due

All the information should be centered and in the upper half of the page, as demonstrated in the image below:

APA 6 sample title page

APA 6 title page example

If you are writing in APA 7, your title page will have:

Title of your paper written in lower- and upper-case letters, centered, and bolded (should be two spaces from the top – press enter twice)

Institutional Affiliation

Course Number and Name

Instructor’s Name

Assignment due date

After the title, press the ENTER button three times, then begin typing the rest of the content of your title/cover page as demonstrated below:

APA 7 sample title page

Abstract (if required in your assignment/essay)

An abstract is a 150-250 words long summary of your paper. It is mandatory for professional papers but can be omitted in student papers, except for the longer texts like term papers, reports, research papers, proposals, dissertations, and theses.

Here is how to format an abstract in APA:

It is separated from the title page.

The title should be labeled as “Abstract” and should be centered and bold.

The contents of the abstract should appear under it, written in prose form.

Unlike the paragraphs in the body, introduction, and conclusion, the first line of the abstract is never indented.

An abstract must be written as a single block paragraph without any blank lines or headings

You can list three to five relevant keywords. The term “keywords” should be in italics and indented, followed by a full colon and a list of your keywords in lower cases separated by commas.

The abstract is double-spaced.

Your abstract should give your readers an idea about the main topic, research questions, methods, results/findings, data analysis methods, and conclusion.

The Body

The body forms the bulk of your entire paper. It entails the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. It comes after either the abstract or the title page. Here is how to create a good APA paper body.

You should write a relevant page number at the top upper right corner of all the pages, continuing from the numbering on the title page and abstract sections.

You should type your title in boldface and center it but never underline or italicize it unless necessary.

Your introduction should begin as a paragraph under the title with the first line indented. Likewise, all the paragraphs in the body are first-line indented.

Utilize headings and subheadings when writing the body.

Headings and Subheadings

Although headings are important in research papers, they can be used in organizing ideas in an essay to make it easier to locate information. In addition, the headers help the readers understand the content or main ideas they are about to read under them.

There are five levels of headings and subheadings in APA format, each with its unique formatting.

Level 1

This is the first title of your paper.

It should be centered in the middle of the page.

It should be written in boldface.

Should use title case.

Level 2

It should be placed against the left side margin.

Use bold letters.

Use title case.

Not italicized.

Level 3

Should be placed against the left side margin.

Use bold letters.

Use title case.

End with a period.

Level 4

Should be indented from the left margin and bolded.

Written in title case where necessary.

Ends with a period.

Not italicized.

Level 5

It should be indented, bolded, and italicized.

Use title case if necessary.

End the heading with a period.

In-Text Citation Style and Formats

APA follows the author-date format for in-text citations. However, there are variations in presentation depending on the type of work that you are citing.

In-text citations are compressed versions of the bibliographic references that are strategically placed in a text. They help make direct reference to another person’s work when summarizing, quoting, or paraphrasing ideas from their scholarly work.

APA citation format is easier than you probably think. There are many citation tools that you can use to generate an APA reference page and in-text citations. You can also do so using the referencing tool on Microsoft Word.

When writing in-text citations in APA, you will use the last name of the author and the year of publication as shown below:

Capitalize per noun

Sources with one author: list the last name of the author and year.

(Shanley, 2021)

Sources with one author: list the last name of the author and year.

(Shanley, 2021)

Sources with one author: list the last name of the author and year.

Sources with two authors: Use an ampersand in parentheses

(Nancy& Patrick, 2021)

Sources with two authors: Use an ampersand in parentheses

Sources with three or more authors:

List all the three authors in the first in-text citations and only list the first author and use “et al.” in subsequent citations

First citation: (Laban, Faith, & Mathews, 2021)

Subsequent citations: (Laban et al., 2021)

Sources with three or more authors:

List all the three authors in the first in-text citations and only list the first author and use “et al.” in subsequent citations

First citation: (Laban, Faith, & Mathews, 2021)

Sources with three or more authors: list only the first author then followed by “et al.”

(Laban et al., 2021)

Sources with three or more authors: list only the first author then followed by “et al.”

Citing multiple authors: separate each work using semi-colons.

(Laban et al., 2021; Nancy & Patrick, 2021)

Citing multiple authors: separate each work using semi-colons.

(Laban et al, 2021; Nancy & Patrick, 2021)

Citing multiple authors: separate each work using semi-colons.

Direct quotes from sources: include the page number.

(Maryjane, 2021, p. 30)

Direct quotes from sources: include the page number.

(Maryjane, 2021, p. 30)

Direct quotes from sources: include the page number.

Unknown author: use a shortened title of the work in quotation marks instead of the author’s name.

(“Avoiding Plagiarism,” 2021)

Unknown author: use a shortened title of the work in quotation marks instead of the author’s name.

(“Avoiding Plagiarism,” 2021)

Unknown author: use a shortened title of the work in quotation marks instead of the author’s name.

Unknown date: use the abbreviation “n.d” in place of the date.

(Jameson, n.d.)

Unknown date: use the abbreviation “n.d” in place of the date.

Unknown date: use the abbreviation “n.d.” in place of the date.

(Jameson, n.d.)

Unknown date: use the abbreviation “n.d.” in place of the date.

Multiple works by the same author/same year: Use lower-case letters (a, b, c…) with the year to order the entries in a reference list. Use the same format for in-text:

(Bruce, 1998a) (Bruce, 1998b)

Multiple works by the same author/same year: Use lower-case letters (a, b, c…) with the year to order the entries in a reference list. Use the same format for in-text:

(Bruce, 1998a) (Bruce, 1998b)

Multiple works by the same author/same year: Use lower-case letters (a, b, c…) with the year to order the entries in a reference list. Use the same format for in-text:

Short Quotes

Short quotations usually are less than 40 words

They are incorporated within the text, and quotation marks are used to indicate the specific information lifted as it is from another source

You can use parenthetical citations to refer to an author whose work you are paraphrasing. For example:

According to Williamson (2021), “social media is becoming a tool of manipulation and surveillance by the state organs” (p. 43).

You can also use the author’s last name, year, and page number from where you got the quote. For example:

“Social media is becoming a tool of manipulation and surveillance by the state organs” (Williamson, 2021, p. 43).

Remember that punctuation for the sentences comes after the parentheses.

Long Quotes

Long quotes have more than 40 words

You should use no quotation marks

Center the block quotation

Ensure that a parenthetical citation has a punctuation mark.

Reference Section

Now that you made it here, you are on the final touches of your assignment. Although many students, and professionals alike, loath at organizing references, there are many citation tools online that can help you.

Check out tools such as citethisforme, Citation Machine, EasyBib, Citefast, and ZBib, which are citation generators that can help you organize your APA reference page in a flash.

Begin a new page for the references immediately after the conclusion

The title of the references page should be “References,” written in bold in APA 7 and not bolded in APA 6, but center-aligned

All entries should be in alphabetical order

All the references have a hanging indentation, where the first line flush with the left margin and the additional lines are indented

Ensure that the reference section is double-spaced and maintains the same font type and size as the body

Include all the sources that you have cited in-text.

Now, get that A+ grade for a job well done!

Now, suppose you were a frustrated student, researcher, or professional. In that case, we are very sure things have taken a good turn of events. Getting poor grades or scolding for not formatting a paper in APA can be exasperating. But, on the other hand, if you have the content right, then formatting should be the easiest thing of them all.

We have been there and seen that it is possible to forget specific APA requirements, especially if you are not writing as many papers as our paper writers do. Consequently, you might make formatting and stylistic mistakes in your APA paper.

Our professional APA writers understand and have mastered APA formatting. They know the nitty-gritty of the APA guidelines. Their insights and research were valuable in putting together this article.

We believe that by reading this quick APA formatting guide, you can make your paper follow the APA formatting 100% and score that deserved A+. But if you need help, we can edit your paper and format it in APA. So do not hesitate to enjoy our services; talk to our support team that is available 24/7.

APA Formatting: A Quick guide with Examples, tips, and illustrations

What is APA Format?

General Guidelines for APA Formatting and Writing Style