Step-by-Step: How to Learn the APA Format

The American Psychological Association establishes formats essential for clarity and consistency in writing scientific papers. Although you may be familiar with guidelines established by the Modern Language Association to report research findings in the humanities, follow guidelines established by the APA to report research findings in the social and behavioral sciences that may contain statistics and reference tables.

Things You'll Need

  • APA Handbook, 6th edition, second printing
  • Reference list
  • Word processing program
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Instructions

    • 1

      Construct your findings in eight sections and organize your material in the following order: title page, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references and appendices. Pay attention to technical details including margins, headers, spacing and font type.The final paper must be numbered sequentially beginning with the title page.

    • 2

      Use quotations accurately. Introduce short quotations with a signal phrase, the author's last name, followed by the year of publication in parentheses. Indent quotations of more than 40 words using a block style and omit quotation marks. Provide the page number directly after the longer quote; place the parenthetical citation after the closing punctuation mark.

    • 3

      Follow the guidelines for accurate citing of secondary sources, which includes the use of present perfect or past tense when citing research conducted by others. Provide page numbers of directly quoted material, but only the author and year of publication if you do not directly quote material from the secondary source. Avoid using footnotes and end-notes; place necessary content and copyright permission notes at the bottom of the appropriate page.

    • 4

      Use hanging indentations when listing references. Alphabetize references according to the author's last name and follow capitalization rules, which vary depending on the type of source. Capitalize all major words in journal titles. Italicize titles of books and journals.

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