APA Formatting And Style Guide

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/). When printing this page, you must

include the entire legal notice at bottom.

Contributors:Joshua M. Paiz, Elizabeth Angeli, Jodi Wagner, Elena Lawrick, Kristen Moore,

Michael Anderson, Lars Soderlund, Allen Brizee, Russell Keck.

Summary:

APA (American Psychological Association) is most commonly used to cite sources within the

social sciences. This resource, revised according to the 6th edition, second printing of the

APA manual, offers examples for the general format of APA research papers, in-text citations,

endnotes/footnotes, and the reference page. For more information, please consult the

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition, second printing.

General Format

Please use the example at the bottom of this page to cite the Purdue OWL in APA.

To see a side-by-side comparison of the three most widely used citation styles, including a

chart of all APA citation guidelines, see the Citation Style Chart.

You can also watch our APA vidcast series on the Purdue OWL YouTube Channel.

General APA Guidelines

Your essay should be typed, double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11") with 1"

margins on all sides. You should use a clear font that is highly readable. APA recommends

using 12 pt. Times New Roman font.

Include a page header (also known as the "running head") at the top of every page. To

create a page header/running head, insert page numbers flush right. Then type "TITLE OF

YOUR PAPER" in the header flush left using all capital letters. The running head is a

shortened version of your paper's title and cannot exceed 50 characters including spacing and

punctuation.

Major Paper Sections

Your essay should include four major sections: the Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and

References.

Title Page

The title page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, and the institutional

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affiliation. Include the page header (described above) flush left with the page number flush

right at the top of the page. Please note that on the title page, your page header/running head

should look like this:

Running head: TITLE OF YOUR PAPER

Pages after the title page should have a running head that looks like this:

TITLE OF YOUR PAPER

After consulting with publication specialists at the APA, OWL staff learned that the APA 6th

edition, first printing sample papers have incorrect examples of Running heads on pages after

the title page. This link will take you to the APA site where you can find a complete list of all

the errors in the APA's 6th edition style guide.

Type your title in upper and lowercase letters centered in the upper half of the page. APA

recommends that your title be no more than 12 words in length and that it should not contain

abbreviations or words that serve no purpose. Your title may take up one or two lines. All text

on the title page, and throughout your paper, should be double-spaced.

Beneath the title, type the author's name: first name, middle initial(s), and last name. Do not

use titles (Dr.) or degrees (Ph.D.).

Beneath the author's name, type the institutional affiliation, which should indicate the

location where the author(s) conducted the research.

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Image Caption: APA Title Page

Abstract

Begin a new page. Your abstract page should already include the page header (described

above). On the first line of the abstract page, center the word “Abstract” (no bold, formatting,

italics, underlining, or quotation marks).

Beginning with the next line, write a concise summary of the key points of your research. (Do

not indent.) Your abstract should contain at least your research topic, research questions,

participants, methods, results, data analysis, and conclusions. You may also include possible

implications of your research and future work you see connected with your findings. Your

abstract should be a single paragraph double-spaced. Your abstract should be between 150

and 250 words.

You may also want to list keywords from your paper in your abstract. To do this, indent as you

would if you were starting a new paragraph, type Keywords: (italicized), and then list your

keywords. Listing your keywords will help researchers find your work in databases.

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Image Caption: APA Abstract Page

Please see our Sample APA Paper resource to see an example of an APA paper. You may

also visit our Additional Resources page for more examples of APA papers.

How to Cite the Purdue OWL in APA

Individual Resources

Contributors' names and the last edited date can be found in the orange boxes at the top of

every page on the OWL.

Contributors' names (Last edited date). Title of resource. Retrieved from http://Web address

for OWL resource

Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A.

(2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu

/owl/resource/560/01/

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Contributors:Joshua M. Paiz, Elizabeth Angeli, Jodi Wagner, Elena Lawrick, Kristen Moore,

Michael Anderson, Lars Soderlund, Allen Brizee, Russell Keck.

Summary:

APA (American Psychological Association) is most commonly used to cite sources within the

social sciences. This resource, revised according to the 6th edition, second printing of the

APA manual, offers examples for the general format of APA research papers, in-text citations,

endnotes/footnotes, and the reference page. For more information, please consult the

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition, second printing.

In-Text Citations: The Basics

Reference citations in text are covered on pages 169-179 of the Publication Manual. What

follows are some general guidelines for referring to the works of others in your essay.

Note: APA style requires authors to use the past tense or present perfect tense when using

signal phrases to describe earlier research, for example, Jones (1998) found or Jones (1998)

has found...

APA Citation Basics

When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that

the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, for

example, (Jones, 1998), and a complete reference should appear in the reference list at the

end of the paper.

If you are referring to an idea from another work but NOT directly quoting the material, or

making reference to an entire book, article or other work, you only have to make reference to

the author and year of publication and not the page number in your in-text reference. All

sources that are cited in the text must appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.

In-Text Citation Capitalization, Quotes, and Italics/Underlining

Always capitalize proper nouns, including author names and initials: D. Jones.

If you refer to the title of a source within your paper, capitalize all words that are four

letters long or greater within the title of a source: Permanence and Change. Exceptions

apply to short words that are verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs: Writing

New Media, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.

(Note: in your References list, only the first word of a title will be capitalized: Writing

new media.)

When capitalizing titles, capitalize both words in a hyphenated compound word:

Natural-Born Cyborgs.

Capitalize the first word after a dash or colon: "Defining Film Rhetoric: The Case of

Hitchcock's Vertigo."

Italicize or underline the titles of longer works such as books, edited collections, movies,

television series, documentaries, or albums: The Closing of the American Mind; The

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Wizard of Oz; Friends.

Put quotation marks around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles, articles

from edited collections, television series episodes, and song titles: "Multimedia

Narration: Constructing Possible Worlds"; "The One Where Chandler Can't Cry."

Short Quotations

If you are directly quoting from a work, you will need to include the author, year of

publication, and the page number for the reference (preceded by "p."). Introduce the

quotation with a signal phrase that includes the author's last name followed by the date of

publication in parentheses.

According to Jones (1998), "Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it

was their first time" (p. 199).

Jones (1998) found "students often had difficulty

...