General Information

• APA guidelines state that a paper should be typed, with double spacing of the text. The outside margins (top, bottom and both sides) are set one inch from the edge of the paper. The paper should be 8½ by 11 inches and the paper's weight should be at least 20 pounds.
  
  

Sections

• APA papers are divided into sections, each of which begins on its own page. Those sections include the abstract, the text (or article), the references, the appendices, the author notes, the footnotes, the tables, the figure captions and the figures. Sections can be amended, depending on the needs of the paper.
  
  

Format

• The titles on the first page of APA papers should be one-third of the way down the page, featuring the title, the writer's name, the course name and number, the instructor's name and the date. Each item should have its own line. Also, a running page header should appear in the upper right hand corner of each page, including the title page. The header should be set one half-inch from the top of the page, and should feature the paper's title, with the page number after.
  
  

In-Text Citation

• The basic APA citation rules state that writers should cite their sources in the "author-date" style, which means the author's name, followed by the year of the publication. This information should appear in parentheses after the cited information. If the information is coming directly from the page of a source (as in a quote), then use the author's name and year, followed by the page number from the source material. In this case, the author's name is used as a signal phrase, followed by the year in parentheses. Put the page number of the source material after the cited information.
  
  

References

• All APA papers should have a references page. The list should be arranged by the author's last name. If the references contain one or more articles by one author, they should be listed by article title. The first line of the entry is flush left, with the following lines indented one half-inch from the margin. Do not use the author's first name, only their initial. The ampersand (&) should be used to separate two or more authors. If the article does not have an author, alphabetize it by article title. All article titles should be either italicized or underlined, but they should be consistent in either case.