Apa Format

Cover page

Title of Paper Repeated Exactly As It Appears On Title Page

This template was developed by Paul Rose of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. To make the template more practical for typical class papers, we have made minor alterations to Dr. Rose’s template (e.g., omitting Author Note, Abstract sections). If submitting a paper for publication, use Dr. Rose’s full template, which is available for free download at www.siue.edu/~prose/classes/APAFormatTemplate.doc

To use this template, begin the body of your paper (your introduction) as the first paragraph beneath the title. Note that APA does not use the Introduction header: just plunge in. Add your text and delete the placeholder text used in the template. The rest of the text in this template provides hints about properly generating all the parts of your APA-formatted paper.

APA style specifies that major components of the paper (abstract, body, references, etc.) each begin on a new page with the heading centered at the top of the page. The body of the text is typically divided into sections with headings such as Method, Results, and Discussion. For an example of a paper properly formatted per the APA Manual, Sixth Edition, go to http://www.apastyle.org/manual/related/sample-experiment-paper-1.pdf Some papers have multiple studies in them so the body could have multiple sections and subsections within it.

Sections can be further divided into subsections with headings. An example is a Method section divided into Participants, Materials, and Procedure subsections. Unlike in earlier editions of the APA manual, the sixth edition tells you to bold headings (but not the title above or anything on the title page). Below are examples.

Heading Level 1

A Level 1 heading (centered, headline style caps, bold font, separate line) is used for a major section of a paper such as the Background, Literature Review, or Discussion sections. A Level 2 heading (flush left margin, headline style...