Use Times New Roman, font 12. Double-space everything and use one-inch margins, indenting the first line of each paragraph. Left-align the text. Include page numbers on the top right-hand corner of every page and a left-aligned header containing an abbreviated version of your title. There are five levels of titles used, formatted in these ways, in order of importance: centered and bold; left and bold; indented, bold and sentence case; indented, bold, italicized and sentence case; and indented, italicized and sentence case.
Page 1 is your title page. It should include the title of your autobiography, your name and institutional affiliation, if you have any, all centered in the upper half of the page. Page 2 contains an abstract, which is a brief summary of your paper. If you like, you can include a list of keywords at the end of your abstract, designed to help researchers find your paper in a database. Page 3 is where you actually begin writing your autobiography. References appear at the end followed by appendices, each on a new page.
An autobiography will not contain the number of references which a research paper does, since you are your own primary reference. However, if you choose to quote from other literary works, websites, podcasts or other outside sources, you need to reference them properly. The APA also encourages you to reference works you borrow ideas from, even if you don’t quote directly from them. To learn details of how to reference specific types of works, check out their online tutorial.
The APA’s style recommendations are geared towards scientific papers, but some are still useful for an autobiography. Speak in clear, direct language. Avoid the use of words which could be viewed as prejudicial or inflammatory. Even if this is your life story you’re writing, your credibility will be threatened by obvious bias. Be precise and to the point, rather than dwelling on unimportant secondary details. Be cautious in your use of metaphor and poetry; this is a narration of actual events, not merely a rumination on the meaning of life.