General Format - Purdue OWL
General APA Guidelines
Your essay should be typed and double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11"), with 1" margins on all sides. Include a page header at the top of every page. For a professional paper, this includes your paper title and the page number. For a student paper, this only includes the page number.
Font
The 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual recommends a few fonts that are widely available, such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, and 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, as well as serif fonts like 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, and 10-point Computer Modern.
Major Paper Sections
Your essay should include four major sections: the Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References.
Title Page
Note: APA 7 provides slightly different directions for formatting the title pages of professional papers and student papers. The title page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, and the institutional affiliation. A professional paper should also include the author note.
- Type your title in upper and lowercase letters centered in the upper half of the page.
- Beneath the title, type the author's name: first name, middle initial(s), and last name.
- Do not use titles (Dr.) or degrees (PhD).
- Beneath the author's name, type the institutional affiliation, which should indicate the location where the author(s) conducted the research.
- A professional paper should include the author note beneath the institutional affiliation, in the bottom half of the title page. This should be divided up into several paragraphs, with any paragraphs that are not relevant omitted. The first paragraph should include the author’s name, the symbol for the ORCID iD, and the URL for the ORCID iD. Any authors who do not have an ORCID iD should be omitted. The second paragraph should show any change in affiliation or any deaths of the authors. The third paragraph should include any disclosures or acknowledgements, such as study registration, open practices and data sharing, disclosure of related reports and conflicts of interest, and acknowledgement of financial support and other assistance. The fourth paragraph should include contact information for the corresponding author.
Abstract
- Begin a new page.
- Your abstract page should already include the page header.
- On the first line of the abstract page, center and bold the word “Abstract” (no 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 typically be no more than 250 words.
- You may also want to list keywords from your paper in your abstract.
Citing the Purdue OWL in APA
- The page template for the new OWL site does not include contributors' names or the page's last edited date. However, select pages still include this information. In the absence of contributor/edit date information, treat the page as a source with a group author and use the abbreviation "n.d." for "no date":
