How To Write Your Paper Using APA 7th Edition

APA 7th edition writing style format, is an acronym to the American Psychological Association, relevant in standardizing academic, books, or other papers. They have released several formats including APA 6th edition and the most recent being APA 7th edition, which is the focus of this article. Here, we will take a step-by-step approach on how to format your paper to meet the APA 7th edition standards. I will also provide necessary resources to help you format the citations and references.

General APA 7th Edition Guidelines

In general, an APA 7th edition paper consists:

• Title page
• Table of contents, if required
• Abstract, if required
• Body
• References
• Appendix, if required

The above sections are essential in neatly organizing your paper and increases readability. The paper can further be improved by ensuring that:

• Double spacing
• Recommended fonts like Times New Roman 12-point, Arial 11-point, and Calibri 11-point.
• APA Margins – 1″ or 2.54CM

APA 7th Edition Title Page

• The title should appear in the first half of the paper
• Title should not be more than 12 words
• The title should use upper and lower case e.g (Exploring Impacts of…)
• Do not abbreviate or use redundant words in the title
• The title should be bold
• Your name or author’s should appear below the title
• After the author’s name, add institutional affiliation/school, course name, professor’s name, and title

Figure 1 shows an example of the title page using APA 7th edition style.

APA 7th Edition Abstract

The abstract should have the following components:

• It should be written on a new page
• It should contain the header “Abstract”, bold and centered
• Do not indent the content or the paragraphs
• The content should be a summary of the paper, consisting of topic, relevance, thesis, research question, participants, research design, data analysis, results, and conclusion
• Recommended to use one paragraph of about 130-150 words
• If required, write keywords below this paragraph with the “Keywords” sub-header italicized

APA 7th Edition Headings

Headings in APA 7 or any other paper helps organize the article into related ideas. The styles group in word is a critical component in formatting APA headings into different levels. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of styles group in Word that you can use to create relevant headings. Click on the highlighted buttons for more options

Select the words to set as the header the apply Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, or Heading 4. Then format the headers as follow to meet APA 7th edition standards.

Heading level 1 in edition should be centered, bold, uppercase and lowercase as shown

Level 1, Centered, Bold, Uppercase, and Lowercase

Heading level 2 in edition should be left-aligned, bold, uppercase, and lowercase as shown

Level 2, Left-aligned, Bold, Uppercase, and Lowercase

Heading level 3 in edition should be left-aligned, bold, uppercase, lowercase, and italicized as shown

Level 3, left-aligned, bold, Uppercase, Lowercase, and Italicized

Level 4 heading in should be indented, bold, and contains a period. The paragraph continues after this heading as shown

Level 4 heading sample. The paragraph continues from this heading…

APA 7th Edition References

The References or Reference List starts on a new page at the end of the paper. It includes any resource or source cited in the paper. Generating references helps in your paper appear more professional and reliable for using valid data. Google scholar is one of the most popular tool and free to use for acquiring academic and reliable sources in any topic. Google scholar can also help in generating references to be copied in your reference list. Another alternative for using well formatted references includes online citation generator that have APA 7th edition. You can cite any resource then copy it to your document. Remember to format the references as follows:

• All references should be indented or hanging indent
• Should have author’s name
• It is alphabetized from A to Z
• Spell out the name of group author

Ask for guidance from our experts in your journey towards understanding how APA format works.