White, unlined paper that is 8.5 inches by 11 inches is used for an APA-formatted essay. Staple or paper-clip your essay in the upper left hand corner of the paper. The essay should be typed in a font such as Times New Roman, Arial or Courier, never handwritten. Size 12 font is typically used.
An APA-formatted essay is double-spaced throughout the entire paper and only one space is used after a period or other punctuation marks. The margins of the essay are one inch on the top, bottom and sides. The first line of a paragraph is indented by one half-inch from the left side of the margin. Quotations that are set off are indented one inch from the left.
Pages are in the following order: title page, abstract, body, references, appendixes, footnotes, tables, figure captions and figures. All of these sections may or may not be included per your instructors instructions for the essay. Each of these sections should begin on a new page.
You must use a header that appears in the upper right-hand corner of each page. The header should include the first two or three words of the essay title, five spaces and then the page number. Page numbers begin with the title page.
The abstract is a 75 to 100 word overview of the essay, similar to an introduction. It should be a separate page placed right after the title page. The word "Abstract" is centered at the top of the paper, followed by a paragraph that is not indented. The abstract contains the purpose, thesis, scope, sources or data collected and then the conclusion.
The title of the paper is centered on the first line of the first page of the body. Headings are used throughout the body to organize the document. Sources must be acknowledged in the body with the author and date of publication. The full citation is placed in the reference section of the essay.
Proper nouns, including names and initials are always capitalized. All words after a dash or colon are also capitalized. Books, movies, TV series, documentaries and albums are italicized. Quotations marks are placed around journal articles, TV series episodes and song titles.
APA formatting requires hanging indentation for references, meaning all lines after the first line of the reference should be indented by one-half inch from the left. Authors are listed with last name first. All entries should be alphabetized by last names of the authors. If you have several references by the same author, they are listed in order of the year of publication. If referring to a citation that is not a book, article or web page, then capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the title. Capitalize all of the major words included in journal titles. Only italicize books and journals, not articles, essays or edited collections. Those should have quotation marks around them instead.
APA essays are formatted with endnotes, not footnotes, which are placed at the end of the document. They are numbered starting with one and in consecutive order. Following the number there is a period and a space. They are double-spaced with the same font size as the rest of the document. Each new endnote is indented. They are typically used for comments that don't fit well into the body.