APA Heading Formats

APA Style: Formatting In-text Citations with Three to Five Authors

(a.) Examples of first time citing 

Peppers, Wan, and Phillips (2014) found that students in a remedial math class who used concrete and virtual manipulatives improved their attitudes toward learning math.

 In one study, students in a remedial math class who used concrete and virtual manipulatives improved their attitudes toward learning math (Peppers, Wan, & Phillips, 2014).

 (b.) Examples of second time citing 

Peppers et al. (2014) did not find any of their students possessed negative reactions to using either type of manipulative.

Knowing students’ misconceptions about learning fractions can help teachers effectively plan instruction (Peppers et al., 2014)

APA Style: Formatting In-text Citations with Two Authors

1. Name both authors every time you cite them throughout your paper, 
2. WHEN YOU mention their names in the sentence, 
1. write the authors' names and the year of publication using a signal phrase, 
2. complete the sentence with punctuation, 
3. use the word "and" between the author's names in the text. For example: 
1. Stein and Smith (1998) believe that students’ thinking can devolve into the following procedures without connection to the meaning or into nonproductive exploration. 
3. WHEN YOU DO NOT mention their names in the sentence, 
1. write the authors' name followed by a comma and the year of publication at the end of the sentence, 
2. enclose the citation in parentheses and complete the sentence with punctuation, 
3. use the "&" between the authors' names in the text. For example:
1. As in any mathematics lessons, students’ thinking can devolve into the following procedures without connection to the meaning or into nonproductive exploration (Stein & Smith, 1998)

My work is based on the Purdue Online Writing Lab -https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/

APA Style: Formatting In-text Citations with One Author

WHEN YOU mention the author's in the sentence ...

1. write the author's name and the year of publication using a signal phrase,
2. complete the sentence with punctuation: For example: 
1. Adams (2010) claims that many science teachers are frustrated that their students do not know how to think like a scientist while conducting investigations.

WHEN YOU DO NOT mention the author's name in the sentence

1. write the author's name followed by a comma and the year of publication at the end of the sentence, 
2. enclose the citation in parentheses and complete the sentence with punctuation. For example: 
1. Many science teachers are frustrated that their students do not know how to think like a scientist while conducting investigations (Adams, 2010).

My work is based on the Purdue Online Writing Lab -https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/

APA Style: Formatting Figures

When formatting a figure, call out the figure in your text and make sure to include the figure number and a title with a legend and caption. Keep the following ideas in mind:

1. Number all figures sequentially as you refer to them in your text, 
2. Keep the title brief but descriptive

This design causes the note-taker to deliberately regulate several cognitive tasks simultaneously (Piolat, Olive, & Kellogg, 2005) and allows for the interaction of long-term memory schemas with the new material brought into working memory (Paas, Renkl, & Sweller, 2003). Note-takers have to regulate their comprehension of what is being read (asking questions such as: do I understand what I am reading) and select what they judge to be the key ideas and details that should be written/typed into the notes section. As seen in the box-and-whisker plot in Figure 1 and the explanations below it, this hypothesis was confirmed. (excerpt from Evans & Shively, 2018)

Figure 1. Box-and-Whisker plot of reading comprehension scores (N=101). Boxes enclose the middle 50% of values or the Interquartile range; the “X” in the box indicates the mean for each group;  extending lines indicate the top 25% and bottom 25% of values; outliers are indicated with dots.

APA Style: Formatting a Table

When using a table in your writing, call out the table in the paragraph above your table. Format it in the manner shown in the example.  Keep the following in mind:

1. Number all tables sequentially as you refer to them in your text, 
2. Keep the title brief, but descriptive, 
3. Eliminate vertical lines, 
4. to format a table displaying the results of a ANOVA or a Regression - see: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/19/ ,

Example: 

Reading assignment for the study. Students in each of the four classes were randomly split into four different note-taking groups (see Table 1 for descriptions) and given a short article to read for homework about the psychology of persuasion. The article was taken from the students’ psychology textbook and was used to introduce the students to the basics of persuasion. It was 1629 words long with a Flesch-Kincaid reading grade level (Solnyshkina, Zamaletdinov, Gorodetskaya, & Gabitov, 2017) of 9.6. Students were told that they would use the article’s information to help them plan and give a persuasive sales pitch to the class at the conclusion of the economics unit they had just started. The article was distributed in PDF format using the school’s learning management system Schoology. (excerpt from Evans & Shively, 2018)

Table 1 Description of Note-taking Systems and Student Groups
HCN	Handwritten Cornell Notes:  Students were instructed to use the Cornell note-taking system to take notes in their notebooks. They were reminded to take notes about the main ideas presented in the reading and to take only one or two bulleted notes for every one to two paragraphs.
TCN	Typed Cornell Notes:  Students were instructed to use the Cornell note-taking system to take notes on their computers. They were reminded to take notes about the main ideas presented in the reading and to take only one or two bulleted notes for every one to two paragraphs.
PN	Personal Notes:  Students were instructed to take notes using whatever note-taking method they preferred.
NN	No Notes:  Students were told not to take any notes while reading.  This group acted as the control group.

source: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/19/

APA Style: Formatting Short & Long Quotations in the Text

(1.) Short Quotations 

• a. are less than 40 words, 
• b. are introduced with a signal phrase that includes the author's last name followed by the year of publication, 
• c. end with a page number, 

Example: 
Shively and Yerrick (2014) claim that students in their study "... wished they had been exposed to alternatives earlier and that too much traditional teaching drives students’ motivation for learning downwards" (p. 10).

(2.) Long Quotations 

• a. are longer than 40 words, 
• b. should be in a free-standing block of typewritten lines, 
• c. are not enclosed by quotation marks, 
• d. start on a new line, 
• e. are indented 1/2 inch from the left margin, 
• f. are double-spaced, 
• g. are cited, parenthetically, after the closing punctuation mark, 

Example: 

Writing in his book, Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, (Creswell, 2014), maintains that,

• Just because a problem exists and an author can clearly identify the issue does not mean that the researcher can or should investigate it. You can research a problem if you have access to participants and research sites as well as time, resources, and skills needed to study the issue. You should research a problem if the study of it potentially contributes to educational knowledge or adds to the effectiveness of practice. (p. 61)

APA Style: Formatting Long and Short Works

Titles of Short Works should be enclosed in quotation marks. Examples include:,

1. “Journal articles”, 
2. “Articles from Edited Collections”, 
3. “Song Titles”, 
4. “Television Series Episodes”, 

Titles of Long Works should be underlined or italicized. Examples include:,

1. Books (Books), 
2. Edited Collections (Edited Collections) (such as a book chapter), 
3. Movies (Movies), 
4. Television Series (Television Series), 
5. Documentaries (Documentaries), 
6. Albums (Albums),

APA Heading Format: Level Five

A level five heading is:

1. indented .5", 
2. first word begins with an uppercase letter and all other words (excluding proper nouns) are lowercase, 
3. ends with period, 
4. italicized, 

and ...

1. the body of your paper starts DIRECTLY AFTER the period at the end of the heading 

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References

Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/20/

APA Heading Format: Level Four

A level four heading is:

1. indented .5", 
2. first word begins with an uppercase letter and all other words (excluding proper nouns) are lowercase, 
3. bold,  
4. italicized, 
5. ends with period, 

and ...

1. the body of your paper starts DIRECTLY AFTER the period at the end of the heading

References

Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/20/

APA Heading Format: Level Three

A level three heading is:

1. indented .5", 
2. first word begins with an uppercase letter and all other words (excluding proper nouns) are lowercase, 
3. bold, 
4. ends with period, 

and ...

1. the body of your paper starts DIRECTLY AFTER the period at the end of the heading

References

Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/20/

APA Heading Format: Level Two

A level two heading is:

1. left aligned, 
2. contains uppercase and lowercase letters, 
3. bold, 

and ...

1. the body of the paper begins on a new line, indented .5"

References

Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/20/

APA Heading Format: Level One

A level one heading is: 

1. centered, 
2. contains uppercase and lowercase letters, 
3. bold,

and ...

1. the body of the paper begins on a new line, indented .5"

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References

Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/20/

Formatting a Paper in APA Style: General Guidelines

1. typed, 
2. double spacing, 
3. 8.5” x 11” paper, 
4. 1” margins, 
5. font color: black, 
6. font: Times New Roman, 
7. font size: 12 pt.,

Presentation of Data in a Figure

Presentation of Tabular Data 

One way to present your findings is to use a table. Here is an example of a table properly formatted in APA 6th style.