APA Citation and Paper Formatting Guide (APA 7th Edition): Sample Papers and Reference Lists

The APA Sample Papers (sources: American Psychological Association, Excelsior OWL, Purdue OWL) and APA Research Paper Template may be used to help format or set up your assignment.

1. Highlight the citation with your cursor. 

2. Right click. (on a Mac, hold the Control key, then click)

3. Select Paragraph.

4. Under Indentation, select Special and Hanging.

Source: CSUDH University Library (Withorn, 2020)

• Your essay should be typed and double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11"), with 1" margins on all sides.
• You should use a font consistently throughout the paper. APA recommends using either a sans serif font such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, or a serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or 10-point Computer Modern.
• For student papers, a page header (also known as the “running head”) only needs to include the page number (no title). Insert page numbers flush right.

• The title page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, and the institutional affiliation. A student paper should also include the course number and name, instructor name, and assignment due date. Include a page number on the title page, flush right (see samples on the left-hand side of this page, in the box titled "Sample APA Papers").

Your research paper ends with a list of all the sources cited in the text of the paper. Here are some quick rules for this Reference list.

1. Start a new page for your Reference list. Centre the title, References, at the top of the page.
2. Double-space the list.
3. All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is called hanging indentation.
4. All authors' names should be inverted (i.e., last names should be provided first).
5. Authors' first and middle names should be written as initials.
   • For example, the reference entry for a source written by Jane Marie Smith would begin with "Smith, J. M."
   • If a middle name isn't available, just initialize the author's first name: "Smith, J."
6. Give the last name and first/middle initials for all authors of a particular work up to and including 20 authors (this is a new rule, as APA 6 only required the first six authors). Separate each author’s initials from the next author in the list with a comma. Use an ampersand (&) before the last author’s name. If there are 21 or more authors, use an ellipsis (but no ampersand) after the 19th author, and then add the final author’s name.
7. Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.
8. For multiple articles by the same author, or authors listed in the same order, list the entries in chronological order, from earliest to most recent.
9. When referring to the titles of books, chapters, articles, reports, webpages, or other sources, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns.
10. Italicize titles of longer works (e.g., books, edited collections, names of newspapers, and so on).
11. Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works such as chapters in books or essays in edited collections (note: some shorter works may require quotation marks for the in-text citation).

Source: Purdue OWL