By Brooke Smith
In its quest to create uniform guidelines for professionals submitting manuscripts to journals, the American Psychological Association (APA) created its own formatting style which eventually encompassed not only scholarly writings in the area of psychology, but education and many social sciences as well. The current incarnation of these guidelines set forth in the Fifth Edition of the "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association" (the Manual) is a bewildering and counterintuitive morass of instructions presented in a structure only a fan of the Internal Revenue Code could love. Yet much of this information can be boiled down to the following principles which will at least get you much further on the way to producing an APA-formatted paper.
What level of APA formatting do you need? Part of the reason the Manual is so complex is that it focuses on the highest level of academic writing: articles destined for scientific journals. Yet many times college instructors require APA style for simple research papers that don't require all the bells and whistles of abstracts, running heads, etc. Before embarking on an APA-formatted paper, obtain as much clarification as you can from your instructor or editor on whether all elements of APA need to be strictly followed. Also, be aware if you’re writing a dissertation that the guidelines may be somewhat looser, allowing for a longer abstract or single-spaced quotations and references.
Setting up your paper:
APA manuscripts should be written in 12-point type (no exceptions.) The Manual shows its age by preferring Times Roman and Courier, although obviously Times New Roman and Courier New are acceptable. The margins should be at least 1-inch all around (top, bottom, left, and right), with margins greater than 1-inch being acceptable as long as all four margins are exactly the same. All text including block quotations is double-spaced with a justified left but unjustified right margin. The title page and abtract (if any) appear on separate pages, as does the References list. Although permitted in dissertations, footnotes are frowned upon and must also be placed on a separate page instead of at the bottom of the page of text. Strictly speaking, any tables or figures should also be placed on separate pages, but for unpublished or less formal papers, many authors do include them in the text at the point they are being discussed.
Title page:
The title page is composed of four elements: page header with page number, running head, title, and author's name/affiliation. Create a header where the first two or three words of your title (e.g. "Piaget's Theories 1") followed by the page number appear in the uppermost right-hand corner. The running head is a short version of your title (50 characters max including punctuation and spaces) that appears in the upper left corner of the text field (e.g. “Running head: PIAGET'S THEORIES OF CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT”). The title, author name, and affiliation appear in a double-spaced centered block placed towards the lower portion of the upper half of the page. The title uses normal upper/lowercase capitalization (i.e. it is not all in caps.) Your name should appear directly below the title, with your university affiliation on a separate line below your name. Oddly, APA formatting does not provide for a date, though less formal papers frequently include both this and class/instructor information.
Abstract:
This is a short (120 words maximum) summary of the topic of the paper and its conclusions. It is presented as a single, non-indented, double-spaced paragraph.
Structure/headings:
The title is repeated on the first page of text where it is centered at the top. The structure of the organizational breaks in the text (headings) depends on the complexity of the paper. For a simple paper consisting of an Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion, these three headings could be used just as written with each being centered on the page. If a second level of heading is needed, it should be placed flush left, italicized, and capitalized. If three levels are needed, a third heading is added which is indented and italicized; unlike the second heading, only the first word should be capitalized (other than any words that would be capitalized in normal text.) Confusingly, in creating a fourth level of heading, instead of simply adding a new fourth level beyond the third, the Manual places the new heading in between the original first and second levels, thereby demoting the original second and third levels to third and fourth place respectively. The new heading is an italicized version of the level one heading (i.e. it is also centered and capitalized.) Note: APA headings never appear in all caps, nor are they ever underlined or boldfaced.
Text:
Now that you have everything set up, you're finally ready to write. In general APA follows the basics of good writing. First, you should use American-style spelling, grammar and punctuation correctly. Second, you should aim for conciseness and clarity. Finally, you should use active rather than passive voice whenever possible.
However APA also has some special requirements. First, paragraphs should be no longer than one page (shorter is better.) Second, words should be used for numbers zero through nine, but numerals should be used for numbers 10 or above (unless the number starts a sentence or phrase, in which case words can be used.) Third, numbers and symbols should not be mixed to express percentages (i.e. either "ten percent" or "10%" is correct, but not "10 percent.") Fourth and most importantly, contractions should never be used in original writing (it is acceptable to keep any contractions that appear in quotations.)
Quotations:
Direct quotations of 39 words or fewer may appear within the paragraph set off by quotation marks. Quotations 40 words or longer must be set off as a separate double-spaced block which includes the reference citation at the end.
In-text reference citations:
One of the most important functions of APA formatting is to provide an easy way to tie together work cited in the text with the References list at the end. All information in the text that can be credited to a third person source available to others must have an in-text reference citation containing sufficient information so that it can be linked with the correct item in the References list. Normally this means the author and date as well as a page number for any direct quotations in this format: (Last name of author, year, p. #). When a work with five or fewer authors is cited for the first time, all author names are included in the first citation, which is subsequently abbreviated to: (first author's name, et al.) If the author is unknown, a short reference to the organization or title of the work may be used instead. If more than one work was written in the same year by the same author(s), the years are distinguished by using lower case letters (e.g., 1998a).
References:
All in-text citations must be tied to an expanded version in the References list. The exception is a reference source not available to others, such as a personal conversation, letter, or statement made by a professor in class. The Manual provides 95 examples of correct formats for particular sources depending on their nature (journal article versus book or audio recording), authorship, and type of publication (print versus electronic or other). While explaining all these formats is obviously beyond the scope of the article, here are the basic rules:
1. All reference items are double-spaced and use a hanging indent paragraph style.
2. Authors are identified by their last name and first initial, followed by the date in parentheses.
3. Titles appear in a very odd style in which only the initial letter plus the initial letter of any subtitle are capitalized (along with any proper names or other words normally capitalized.)
4. Book titles are italicized. Publication information follows the title using a format of: Place of publication: Publisher name. Places of publication in the following U.S. cities may be identified by the name of the city itself without the state: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Other cities must include the state as well, unless the state appears in the publisher's name. Other places which may be identified by city only without including the country: Amsterdam, Jerusalem, London, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Tokyo and Vienna.
5. The titles of journal articles are not italicized, but the name of the journal is italicized along with the volume number. Issue and page numbers are not italicized. Numbers only are given for the pages other than from newspaper articles (i.e. page numbers of journal articles are not preceded by "p." or "pp.")
6. References to URLs take the form “Retrieved on month, day, year, from http://www.xxxxxxxxx” (Note there is no period at the end of the URL even if it ends a sentence.)
Conclusion:
Even the most experienced APA writers and editors will frequently find themselves consulting the Manual, especially as the Internet continues to provide new formats for data to be conveyed. However, by keeping the above principles handy, you can at least save yourself some time and energy in keeping track of the basic elements.
