APA Formatting Style

APA (American Psychological Association) is an author/date based style, where emphasis is placed on the author and the date of a piece of work to uniquely identify it. APA is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences.

Running head

• Running head is a shortened version of the paper’s full title

• It cannot exceed 50 characters, including spaces and punctuation (as a rule, 5 words maximum).

• The running head should be in capital letters.

• It should be flush left, and page numbers should be flush right.

• Only on the title page should the running head include the words “Running head” followed by a colon (:)

• For pages following the title page, one should repeat the running head in capital letters but without the words “Running head.”

Title page

1. The title should be centered on the page, typed in 12-point Times New Roman Font.

2. It should not be bolded, underlined, or italicized.

3. It should be in title case*

4. The title should correspond to the topic of the paper and be reflected in the running head.

5. The author’s name and institution should be double spaced and centered.

6. They should not be bolded, underlined, or italicized.

Abstract

• The second page of the paper is dedicated to Abstract.

• In the abstract, the writers should briefly summarize the paper, which allows readers to quickly review its main points and purpose.

• The abstract should be between 150-250 words.

• Abbreviations and acronyms used in the paper as well as other keywords should be defined in the abstract.

• The word “Abstract” should be centered and typed in 12 point Times New Roman.

• It should not be bolded, underlined, or italicized.

• The first line of the abstract paragraph should be flush left (flush-left, or not indented, means that there should be no spacing before the first line of the paragraph).

Note

Customers sometimes do not require the Abstract to be included into the papers. But please, make sure the writers insert it when they deal with more complicated orders, say University papers, research papers and so on.

The page following the Abstract

• The page following the Abstract (or the second page if the Abstract is not required) should begin with the title of the paper, which should be centered on the page, typed in 12-point Times New Roman Font.

• It should not be bolded, underlined, or italicized.

• It should be in title case.

Note

Some writers erroneously regard the title of the paper as the heading of the 1st level. It is wrong. The title is just the title. It is neither the 1st level heading nor the A-level heading (according to another terminology). The same concerns Abstract and References.

In-text citations

• APA format presupposes the author-date method of in-text citation: the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text and a complete reference should appear in the References at the end of the paper.

• In-text citations that are direct quotes should include the author’s/ authors’ name/s, the publication year, and page number/s: (James, 2014, p. 150). Do not forget about the comma between the author’s last name and the year of publication and the period after ‘p.’

• If you are just paraphrasing a source, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication and not the page number in your in-text reference: (James, 2014). Do not forget about the comma between the author’s name and the year of publication.

• As a rule, in-text citations are put at the end of the idea paraphrased:

• If while paraphrasing the idea the author’s name is mentioned in the text, only the year of publication is included into parenthesis which directly follows. No in-text citation is used in the end:

• But if the author’s name is mentioned before he/she is quoted directly, the year of publication is included into parenthesis which directly follows and the page number is put in the parenthesis at the end of the quotation:

• If the direct quotation is 40 words, or longer, it should be put in a free-standing block of lines. No quotation marks should be used.

• One should start the quotation from the new line, indented (in the same place one would begin a new paragraph). Each line which follows should be also indented as the first one. Double-spacing should be maintained. The parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark.

• When a print source has a corporate author, one may use the name of the corporation followed by the year for the in-text citation for the first time.

• If the organization has a well-known abbreviation, include the abbreviation in brackets the first time the source is cited and then use only the abbreviation in later citations.

• When the author of the work is unknown, one should cite the source by its title in the signal phrase or use the first word or two in the parentheses.Titles of books and reports are italicized; titles of articles, chapters, and web pages are in quotation marks.

• If no author or date is given, use the title in your signal phrase or the first word or two of the title in the parentheses and use the abbreviation "n.d." (for "no date").

• To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semicolon

Reference to sources

While referring to the title of a source within the paper, title case should be used.

Example

A Darkness More Than Night

While using the title of a source in References, sentence case should be used.

Note

Sentence case means that only the first word, proper nouns and some other words alike should start with a capital letter.

Example

Connelly, M. (2001). A darkness more than night . NY: Little Brown and Company.

Remember how the titles of different sources should be formatted in the text:

Italicized	In quotation marks
books edited collections movies television series documentaries albums	journal articles articles from edited collections television series episodes song titles

Reference to Author(s)

Please, remember how to refer to one or more authors in the text of the paper as well as in the parenthesis when they are mentioned for the first time in the paper:

Number of Authors	In the text of the paper	In the parenthesis	Comments
Two Authors	According to James and Kameron (2014)	(James & Kameron, 2014)	& is called ampersand
Three to Five Authors	According to James, Brown, and Kameron (2014)	(James, Brown, & Kameron, 2014)	List all the authors Do not forget to put a comma before ‘and’ and before the ampersand
Six and more Authors	According to James et al. (2014)	(James et al., 2014)	Do not forget: period is put after ‘al.’ and not after ‘et’

Please, remember how to refer to one or more authors in the text of the paper as well as in the parenthesis when they are mentioned for the second time in the paper and subsequently:

Number of Authors	In the text of the paper	In the parenthesis
Two Authors	According to James and Kameron (2014)	(James & Kameron, 2014)
Three to Five Authors	According to James et al. (2014)	(James et al., 2014)
Six and more Authors	According to James et al. (2014)	(James et al., 2014)

Headings

In order not to be confused, for our company we have chosen the numeric system of defining the level of headings. So, further on, we will speak about 1st, 2nd, 3rd level headings and elude A, B, C level headings.

APA Headings

1. 1 level: Centered, Boldface, Title Case Headings

2. 2 level: Left-aligned (= Flush left), Boldface, Title Case Heading

3. 3 level: Indented, boldface, sentence case heading with a period. Begin the text after the period.

4. 4 level: Indented, boldface, italicized, sentence case heading with a period. Begin the text after the period.

5. 5 level: Indented, italicized, sentence case heading with a period. Begin body text after the period.

Note

Since the aim of this presentation is to stress the most typical features of APA and MLA formatting styles, in particular, those where the writers often make mistakes, we do not provide information about how each type of source should be formatted in the References.

For more details, please, see the Citation Style Chart.

Title Case and Sentence Case Capitalization in APA

Let’s resume what is the difference between the title case and the sentence case and when they should be used in the APA.

Title case refers to a capitalization style in which most words are capitalized, and sentence case refers to a capitalization style in which most words are lowercased. In both cases, proper nouns and certain other types of words are always capitalized.

Title Case

Title case is used to capitalize the following types of titles and headings in APA Style:

• Titles of references (e.g., book titles, article titles) when they appear in the text of a paper

• Titles of inventories or tests

• Headings at Levels 1 and 2

• The title of your own paper and of named sections within it (e.g., the Discussion section), and

• Titles of periodicals (journals, magazines, or newspapers), which are also italicized (e.g., Journal of Counseling Psychology, The New York Times).

Directions for implementing APA’s title case:

1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;

2. Capitalize all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self-report); and

3. Capitalize all words of four letters or more.

This boils down to using lowercase only for “minor” words of three letters or fewer, namely, for conjunctions (words like and, or, nor, and but), articles (the words a, an, and the), and prepositions (words like as, at, by, for, in, of, on, per, and to), as long as they aren’t the first word in a title or subtitle.

Sentence case

Sentence case is used in a few different contexts in APA Style, including for the following:

• The titles of references when they appear in reference list entries and

• Headings at Levels 3, 4, and 5

• Here are directions for implementing sentence case in APA Style in these two contexts:

• Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;

• Capitalize any proper nouns and certain other types of words;

• Use lowercase for everything else.

Here are some examples of different types of (capitalized) proper nouns, along with some (lowercased) regular or common noun corollaries:

Noun type	Proper noun example	Common noun example
Author or person	Freud, Skinner, von Neumann	the author, the investigator, the scientist
Company, institution, or agency	American Psychological Association, University of Washington, Department of Sociology	the association, a university, a sociology department
Product	Advil, Xerox, Prozac (brand names)	ibuprofen, photocopy, fluoxetine (generic names)
Test or inventory	Beck Depression Inventory, Child Behavior Checklist	a depression inventory, a behavior checklist
Website or database	PsycINFO, Facebook, Survey Monkey, Internet	a database, a social media page, a website, online
Periodical (journal, magazine, newspaper)	Journal of Counseling Psychology, Time, The Washington Post	a psychology journal, a magazine, a newspaper
Software, program, or app	SPSS, Mplus, Davis’s Drug Guide for iPhone	statistical software, a computer program, a mobile app drug guide
Legal materials (statutes, acts, codes, bills, regulations, constitutions, etc.)	Americans With Disabilities Act, FDA Prescription Drug Advertising Rule, U.S. Constitution	antidiscrimination laws, drug advertising legislation, a constitution
Most nouns when they are followed by numerals or letters	Table 1, Figure 2, Panel A	if they are not followed by the numerals or letters: table, figure, panel

Let’s sum up how different types of sources should be formatted in APA. The following table summarises what font and case should be used for the longer works and for their parts in the text of the paper and in References.

Type of the Source	In the text	In References
Book Title	italicized, title case	italicized, sentence case
Title of the Periodical	italicized, title case	italicized, title case
Book Chapter	in quotation marks, title case	not italicized, not in quotation marks, sentence case
Article in Periodical	in quotation marks, title case	not italicized, not in quotation marks, sentence case

Summing Up…

Basic Features of APA

Running head is present on each page

Title page contains only three pieces of information: Title of the Paper, Name, Institution

The second page is dedicated to Abstract

The page following the Abstract starts with a title of the paper

In-text citations usually contain information about the author of the work and the year of publication. Comma is necessary between them (James, 2014)

The headings are strictly levelled.

The word ‘References’ is used for the list of sources.

To better understand the main principles of APA formatting, please, also download the APA sample.