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APA is the formatting and citing style used by the American Psychological Association. As such, it is commonly used when writing papers involving some type of psychology topic. But APA is also utilized for writings in the social sciences field. Here’s what you need to know about formatting with this style, in addition to a few tips to remember when citing with APA.

Formatting with APA

If you are writing a paper that calls for APA formatting, your paper should:

  • Be double-spaced with one-inch margins on each side
  • Use a font recommended by the APA (such as 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode or Computer Modern, 11-point Arial or Georgia, or 12-point Times New Roman)
  • Have a page header that places the page number on the top right-hand side of each page, flush with the margin (if it is a professional paper versus a student paper, the header must also contain the title, or a shortened title if the original is more than 50 characters in length)
  • Contain four basic sections:
    • Title Page – provides the paper title, author’s name, institution name, course name, professor’s name, and date
    • Abstract – a short summary of the research, briefly explaining the topic, why it was studied, methods used, results found, and conclusions drawn based on the findings
    • Main body – an in-depth explanation of all the categories discussed above, as well as a discussion about what the research means or could mean
    • References – resources used in the course of conducting the research and analyzing the results

Citing with APA

When citing with APA, it’s helpful to know what these citations need to look like in the text, as well as how to cite resources in the references section of the paper. Let’s start with in-text citations.

In the body of the paper, citing with APA requires following the information cited with the author’s last name and the year the information was published in parenthesis. An example would be (Smith, 2020). If there are more than one authors but less than six, each author’s last name is listed in the first reference (Smith, Rodriguez, & Patel, 2020). Six or more authors are cited using ‘et al,’ which means ‘and others.’ (Smith et al, 2020). All future references in the paper can also be shortened using ‘et al’ (Smith et al, 2020).

If the information you are citing is a direct quote, the author’s last name and the year published is followed by the page number(s) where the data can be found (Smith, 2020, pp. 15-30). Additionally, if the quote being cited is lengthy, or more than a few lines, citing with APA requires indenting the entire quote a half-inch.

The other place you will be citing with APA is in the references section at the end of the paper. This is where you list all the sources used when compiling and analyzing your research. Any idea that is not your own must be cited here to avoid plagiarism.

The resources should be listed alphabetically by author’s last name or, if the author is unknown, by the source’s title (minus articles such as a, an, and the). Here are a few additional tips to remember when writing your references page if the instructions require citing with APA:

  • Book: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). Book Title. Publisher location: Publisher
  • Edited book: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). Book Title (ed.). Publisher location: Publisher
  • eBook: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). eBook Title. Retrieved from URL
  • Journal article, printed: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). Article title. Journal Title, volume number (issue or part number), page numbers.
  • Journal article, online: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). Article title. Journal Title, volume number (issue or part number), page numbers. DOI or Retrieved from URL
  • Newspaper article, printed: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). Newspaper Title, column/section, p. or pp. (*use p. if citing from one page or pp. if citing from a range of pages)
  • Newspaper article, online: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year published). Newspaper Title, column, section. Retrieved from URL
  • Magazine article, printed or online: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year, month day). Title of article. Title of Magazine, pp.
  • Website: Author Last Name, First Initial. (Year, month day). Title of website. Retrieved from URL

If you’re not familiar with formatting or citing with APA, it may take some time to become comfortable with this style. But once you do, you’ll likely find that it’s pretty easy, as long as you follow these tricks and tips.