APA Style

Introduction

APA style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly

journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field

of behavioural and social sciences. It is described in the style guide of the American

Psychological Association (APA), which is titled the Publication Manual of the American

Psychological Association. APA style is widely used, either entirely or with modifications,

by hundreds of other scientific journals. The first edition of the APA Publication Manual was

published in 1952 as a 61-page supplement to the Psychological Bulletin, marking the

beginning of a recognized "APA style".

Now the 7th edition

Now we are using 6th Edition (2009 to 2019). + MLCU.

After 4 years of developments by APA governance group.

The most important APA format guidelines in the 6th edition are:

For the requirements of submitting an assignment .

DOI – Digital Object Identifier

URL – Universal Resource Locator

Preparation

1. Include a separate Title page and a separate Reference page by inserting a page break

after the title page and another page break after the conclusions.

2. Use regular 12-point (black) font.

 3. Use Times New Roman font face.

Page set up-

Margins

1. The paper must use one-inch margins (top, bottom, right, and left) and
the text must be double-spaced throughout.( all pages)
2. Do not justify the right margin.
3. Indent each paragraph with a five-space indent (0.5 inches).

Writing Style-

As a general rule, write in the 3rd person singular, unless a personal

pronoun is required to avoid ambiguity.

Insert a running head left top of all pages, page no. in right top. E.g. Running Head;

ASDFGFDSA

Indent every new paragraph ½ inch.

Title Page Model

Running head; ASDFDSAE 1

The Title of Paper

Your Name

School/ College Affiliation

Submitted To;

asdfssa

Date of submission;

30/12/2020
Keep these pointers in mind:

Add a page number that is right at the top of the page on all pages.

Avoid any extraneous words that do not add meaning to your title. The APA style
guide advises writers to avoid phrases such as "An Experimental Investigation of..."
or "A Study of...".

 Be concise. Your title should be a short statement of what the reader will find in the
paper.
 Include the title of your paper, your name, and your school affiliation. Don't use titles
or degree info (such as Dr. or Ph.D.) before and after your name.
 List the course number and name, instructor name, and assignment due date on
student title pages.
 Title page should include a page number, article title, author name, and author
affiliation.
 Place the title at the top half of the page and centred between margins.
 Provide a running head that is flush left at the top of the page in all upper-case letters
on a title page for professional papers, but this is not recommended for student papers.
 Use both upper-case and lower-case letters for the title.

CITATIONS

A. In-text Citations B. Reference list

2 Types of In-text Citations

Narrative citation- Last name of author, (year) Schmidt and Oh (2016) ……….

Parenthetical citation-…………… (Last name of author, year) (Schmidt & Oh, 2016)

In-text citations are required when you use someone else's ideas, theories or
research in your paper.
Examples: (author and/or date is mentioned in text)
Quotation:

 "The bones were very fragile" (Cole, 2011, p. 13).

 Cole (2011) found that "The bones were very fragile" (p. 33).

 In 2011, Cole found that "The bones were very fragile" (p. 33).

APA Style uses an author–date reference citation system in the text with an accompanying
reference list
 
Paraphrase:

 The bones broke easily because they were porous (Cole, 2011).

 Cole (2011) discovered that the bones broke easily.

APA style encourages the inclusion of page numbers, but it is not mandatory. Include page or
paragraph numbers if it will help reader find the information.
 (Reiton, 2003, para. 3)

If the document does not contain page numbers, include paragraph numbers.
 (Reiton, 2003, para. 3).     

In No authors: Use the title in place of author. Shorten title if needed. Use double quotation
marks for title of an article, a chapter, or a web page. Use italics for title of a periodical, a
book, a brochure or a report.
 the observations found ("Arctic Voyage," 2014)

 the book Vitamin Discoveries (2013)

Two or more authors:

 Cole and Dough (1998) argued ...

 ...if they were left to their own devices.(Cole & Dough, 1998)

Three to five authors: Include all authors' last names the first time the citation is used.  If
you use the same citation again within the same paragraph, use only the first last name
followed by 'et al'. (Et alia= neutral plural- others) If you used the citation again omit the
year. 
 First time:  Cole, Dough and Ferris (1998) explained...

 Second time: Cole et al. (1998) proved ...

 Third time: Cole et al. demonstrated...

Six or more authors:  Include only the last name of the first author followed by "et al."
(Wasserstein et al., 2010)
Groups
 Spell out the name in full the first time and abbreviate subsequent times only if abbreviation
is well known.
 First time: American Psychological Association (1998) explained...

 Second time: APA (1998) proved ...

 Applying heading styles

First, go through your text making sure that each level of heading is in keeping with APA
Style rules: There are five levels of heading in APA Style. Level 1 is the highest or
main level of heading, Level 2 is a subheading of Level 1, Level 3 is a subheading of Level
2, and so on through Levels 4 and 5. The number of headings to use in a paper depends on
the length and complexity of the work.

Heading level Formatting

Level 1 Centred, Bold, Title Case Capitalization

Level 2 Left-Aligned, Bold, Title Case Capitalization

Level 3  Indented, bold, sentence case capitalization, ending with a period.

Level 4  Indented, bold, italicized, sentence case capitalization, ending with

a period.

Level 5   Indented, italicized, low paragraph heading ending with a period.

Table of Contents
APA does not require a Table of Contents, but your
instructor may specifically ask for you to include one
in your assignment.  If so, view the document below
for help.
A table of contents is like a roadmap of your paper. 
It should contain all the headings in the body,
worded exactly as they appear within.  Be sure to
include appendices.  The left and right hand sides
should line up uniformly. 
 B. Reference list
In the APA reference list, the writer should provide the author, year, title, and source of the
cited work in an alphabetical list of references. The reference format varies depending on
the document type (e.g., journal article, edited book chapter, blog post, webpage), but broadly
speaking always follows the same pattern of author, date, title, source. No need of
numbering.

Reference type Template Example

Author, A., &

Author, B. (year). Schmidt, F. L., & Oh, I.-S. (2016). The crisis of
Title of confidence in research findings in psychology: Is lack
Journal article
article. Journal of replication the real problem? Or is it something
with a DOI
Title, Volume else? Archives of Scientific Psychology, 4(1), 32–
(Issue), page 37. https://doi.org/10.1037/arc0000029
range. DOI

Author, A., &

Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of
Author, B.
Whole book who you think you're supposed to be and embrace
(year). Title of
who you are. Hazelden.
book. Publisher.

Author, A., & Singh, A. A., Hwahng, S. J., Chang, S. C., & White,
Author, B. (year). B. (2017). Affirmative counselling with trans/gender-
Title of chapter. In variant people of colour. In A. Singh & L. M. Dickey
Edited book
E. Editor & A. (Eds.), Affirmative counselling and psychological
chapter with a
Editor (Eds.), Title practices with transgender and gender
DOI
of book (pp. xx- nonconforming clients (pp. 41–68). American
xx). Publisher. Psychological
DOI Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14957-003

Author, A., &

Author, B.
(year). Title of
Webpage on a page. Site Name. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). APA
website URL divisions. https://www.apa.org/about/division/
Group Author.
(year). Title of
page. URL
Plagiarism
This is an academic theft. This is using someone’s ideas or words in our assignment and presenting at our own.
This is not allowed. Plagiarised from books, articles, websites, course notes etc.

7th Edition

The seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is the

Current one, published in October 2019. The goal is to help people become better writers and

communicators by promoting clarity and precision.  In 7th edition, APA also provides an APA

Style website and APA Style blog to help people with APA style and answer common

questions. The seventh edition of the APA Publication Manual contained a few changes to

the format of an APA style title page, including separate guidelines for student and

professional title pages.

Title page format- Font, Positioned upper middle, centred, double spaced, no running head.