APA style and citations for dummies - Joe Giampalmi 2021

Focusing on the title page and page organization
Updating and debugging: APA seventh edition
Conforming to standards: APA and the academic environment

Education moves at the speed of a cruise ship in low gear. After almost a hundred years and a pandemic, APA’s seventh edition provided an exclusive title page for student papers, notable recognition for the junior scholar population. APA also updated and expanded guidelines for page organization.

For professional papers and student papers, the byline (your name as the author and university affiliation) has been updated to align with publishing standards. This means that how your name and affiliation appear on your paper resembles how they’ll appear in a publication. With this alignment change for student papers, APA recognizes that high school and college students, like you, publish their work. The section, “Student Publishing: Your Goal As a Serious Writer,” later in this chapter offers recommendations for students to publish their work.

The new student title page resembles the professional page, but the running head has been deleted. APA also clarified other requirements of the student title page:

· Title bolded and centered in the upper half of the page

· Student’s name (or names of team members) centered, two line-spaces below the title

Team names are positioned with the primary writer listed first.

· Department name and university affiliation double spaced and centered below the student’s name

· Course name and number double spaced and centered below the affiliation

· Professor’s name

· Due date of assignment

· Page numbering in the upper-right corner

You can find detailed information on title pages in Chapter 14, including a template to use for your title pages.

Your professor’s preferences supersede APA guidelines for the title page and all other requirements. APA provides recommendations, not mandates. Your professor mandates.

The seventh edition also clarifies and expands page organization features that improve the reading experience. The following sections offer a look at APA clarifications and updates for page organization.

Running heads

Running heads aren’t required on the title page or any other page throughout the student paper. Running heads were needed when hard copies of assignments were required, and stray pages needed to be identified. Electronic submissions mostly eliminated the need for running heads.

Period spacing

APA changed spacing that follows a period from two spaces to one space. The change to one space also follows a colon, exclamation point, and question mark. See Chapter 7 for additional information and examples. The change was encouraged by electronic publishing to improve page aesthetics and save space(s). Pun intended.

Levels of headings

Use title case (see Chapter 14) for heading levels 3, 4, and 5. Align level 3 headings flush left. Indent level 4 and 5 headings. You can find examples of five levels of headings in Chapter 14. These levels of headings apply to your daily academic writing and add consistency and readability to your writing, in addition to enhancing its professional presentation.

Font options

Font options were increased to accommodate reading needs of special populations. These are now the font choices:

· Times New Roman 12

· Calibri 11

· Arial 11

· Lucida Sans Unicode 10

· Georgia 11

If you choose a font other than Times New Roman 12, check with your professor.

DOI and URL formatting

DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and URL line breaks shouldn’t be inserted manually. Breaks inserted automatically by your word-processing app are acceptable. See Chapter 12 for detailed information on DOIs.

Paper length

The seventh edition recommends determining paper length by word count rather than by page count. Word count includes all words in the body of the paper and all optional sections.

Activate the word count feature under Tools in Microsoft Word.

Bold section headings

APA clarifies that major and optional section headings (abstract, table of contents, reference, appendices, and so forth) are centered and bolded at the top of a new page. Formatting requires a hard page break preceding a new page.

Writing improvement plan

The new edition includes strategies for improving your writing. You can find comprehensive writing- and reading-improvement strategies in Chapter 9.

Page order

APA updated guidelines for order of pages. Required parts include the title page, body of text, and references.

The preceding order of pages represents APA’s basic organization of a piece of writing. APA also provides a list of optional sections (See Chapter 14) to improve organization of your writing.

The sequence of optional parts (with details that I explain in Chapter 13), combined with required parts, looks like the following:

· Title page

· Abstract (or executive summary)

· Table of contents

· Body of text

· References

· Tables and figures

· Appendixes

Page and organization guidelines complement APA’s basic formatting for a page of text that includes the following:

· Use 8.5 x 11-inch white paper.

· Use 1-inch margins on all four sides.

· Align text flush left.

· Indent five spaces for new paragraphs.

· Use double-spacing for the lines of text.

· Use 12-point Times New Roman as the preferred font.

· Position page numbers in the upper-right corner, and include the number on the title page.

With hard copies of assignments becoming obsolete, guidelines for paper color are becoming antiquated. To ensure formatting of other page elements, email assignments to yourself before submitting them to ensure no loss of formatting. A common formatting error is lack of hard page breaks before a major heading that begins on a new page.