Research Guides: APA Citation and University Writing: Formatting

Format Your Paper

The formatting rules and guidelines for APA Style are designed for comprehensive research papers.

Read your assignment instructions and adapt the APA Style rules as needed.

This page gives an overview of what your paper will look like when using APA Style and how to set up a Word document.

Title page (also known as a cover page).

Font options:

sans serif fonts such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode
serif fonts such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal (10-point) Computer Modern (the default font for LaTeX)

Double-spaced. The entire document including the title page and reference list.

References page always starts on a new page.

Page numbers. The title page is your first page. The number one (1) should be located in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Margins. APA guidelines specify: one-inch margins at the top, bottom, right and left of every page. Default margins in Word are one inch.

Citations and reference list. Include both in-text citations and a reference list.

Block quoting (citing quotations of 40 words or longer) - See: Long Quotations on Purdue OWL.

SAMPLE PAPER (APA 7) by Purdue University - Start here 1st
Sample student paper available with all the formatting (title page, headers, page numbers, etc.). Also with in-text citations and reference page. All with explanations.
Sample Paper by APA (APA 7)
Look through the example paper at the formatting, in text citation and reference list. Remember, this sample paper is an example - you will follow you instructor's directions about the parts and sections.