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Title of Your Paper

Your Name

University AffiliationCourse NameInstructor Name

Date

Title of Your Paper

The initial paragraph is assumed in APA to include the introduction to your paper, and therefore does not require the heading of “Introduction”. Use the paper title as the initial paper heading, centered, in bold, with major words capitalized. This is known as Title Case. The heading and content should start at the top of the page with no extra spacing. The entire paper should be double-spaced with no extra spacing between headings or paragraphs. The first line of every paragraph should be indented 5 spaces, or .5” by default. This includes paragraphs following numbered lists and images. This opening paragraph should “introduce” the reader to the content covered in your paper. In many ways, the introduction serves as a mini outline for the rest of the paper. So, as you continue to write the remaining sections, make sure to only include the information related to what you have “introduced” in your introduction paragraph. To sum it up, this section should tell the audience what you are going to talk about in the main body of your paper.

Opening Topic Heading-Level 1

Use a level 1 APA heading appropriate for the content to introduce this section, centered and in bold. The “body” of your paper should expand on the concepts covered in your introduction. It is appropriate to have main and subtopics in this section. The main and subtopics should be identified by using the appropriate Level Heading. This section should talk about what you told the audience you were going to address in your opening paragraph. Use additional APA heading levels following an outline format for each new concept section in your paper. Level 1 is centered and in bold. Level 2 is left-aligned and in bold, level 3 left-aligned, in bold and italics, etc. Each heading should be appropriate for the content contained in the paragraphs under the heading. Do not label the headings with numbers or Roman Numerals (e.g., 1, 2, 3 or I, II, III).

Writing Mechanics

Professional and academic writing should be done in a clear and concise manner. Ideas should be presented in an orderly and logical fashion using a tone that conveys the essential points of your work in an engaging and interesting manner for your readers. The mechanics of your writing should also follow a consistent pattern and not detract from your work. The mechanics of your writing are often just as important as the content of your work itself.

Insert one space after all punctuation, whether in the sentence, citation, or reference, except when using abbreviations (e.g., i.e., U.S.) or ratios (1:3). Be cautious in your use of the colon and semi-colon. Do not use a space before the comma or period in a sentence. Ensure that you both begin and end quoted content with quotation marks. When you quote a source directly, place the closing period outside the final quotation mark, after the citation.

Citing Your Sources

When using information from outside sources in your writing, you must cite those sources appropriately. There are two forms of in-text citations used within APA: Narrative and Parenthetical. In a narrative citation, the author appears within the sentence itself, and the publication date appears immediately following the author’s name(s) in parentheses. For example, Lodico, Spaulding, and Voegtle (2010) wrote a paper discussing educational research methods. In a parenthetical citation, both the author(s) and year appear within parentheses. As an example, when paraphrasing, you can follow the end of the information with a citation then follow with a period to end the sentence. The citation must include the author(s) and year, like this (Lodico, Spaulding, & Voegtle, 2010). In-text citations must match the references provided at the end of the paper. Only provide the author’s initials in the full references at the end of the paper, not within the citations. Refer to section 10 of the APA manual for examples of citing many different sources including websites, webpages, social media, visual works, audio works, webinars, TED talks, YouTube videos, etc.

Directly quoted content is stating verbatim information from another work or from your own previous published or submitted work. “When quoting directly, always provide the author, year and page number of the quotation in the in-text citation in either parenthetical or narrative format” (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 270). An example would be, “This is a hypothetical quote” (Scaduto, Lindsay, & Chiaburu, 2008, p. 27). Another example would be, Black (2020) stated that “this is another example of a quote citation” (p. 23). When quoting from a source that does not contain page numbers (e.g., a website, YouTube video, or some eBooks), provide readers with another way to locate the quoted content in the citation. Some acceptable methods include providing the heading or section name, a paragraph number by counting the paragraphs manually, or a heading or section name in conjunction with a paragraph number. For example, “This information represents a quote from a website” (Black, 2019, para. 3). You may also provide the paragraph number within that section as appropriate, such as (Black, 2019, Example section, para. 3).

There may be times when a website needs to be cited, but no named author can be located on the page. In these instances, you can infer the author such as the organization or government agency itself. An example is the American Psychological Association reference given in this sample paper (American Psychological Association, 2020). When identifying the date of publication for a webpage, only use the copyright date shown on the page if it specifically applies to the date the content itself was published. Use the “last updated” date shown on the page if it applies to the content you are citing. “If no separate date of publication is indicated for the work on the webpage, treat the work as having no date” (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 291). As an example, an organization’s website with no author clearly identified and no date given for the quoted or paraphrased information cited would appear as (Organization Name, n.d.).

Conclusion

This section should cover the highlights of the previous content. The conclusion should “briefly” remind your reader/audience about what is included in the previous sections. Refrain from introducing new topics or ideas in this section, unless you want to revisit and rework/rewrite previous sections to include them. To sum it up, this section is going to remind your audience of what you just told them in the main text of your paper while making a final point. Once you have completed this section, you need to complete the References page. An outline of the Reference page is below.

References

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Lodico, M.G., Spaulding, D.T., & Voegtle, K.H. (2010). Methods in educational research: From theory to practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Scaduto, A., Lindsay, D., Chiaburu, D.S. (2008). Leader influences on training effectiveness: motivation and outcome expectation processes. International Journal of Training and Development, 12(3), 158-170.

All references should contain the following four components: Author, Date, Title, Source. The source includes the publisher’s information and/or the DOI or URL. All references given must have matching citations in the body of your writing to show when they are used and give credit to the sources. List all references alphabetically by author’s last name. The reference page needs to be double-spaced and the second and any subsequent lines of the same reference should be indented using a “hanging” indent. All references should be in the same font as the rest of the paper. The content of this page should begin at the top of the page with no extra spacing.

Additional APA resources are below:

Purdue Online Writing Lab APA 

Citation Machine