Create a cover page
While an abstract is usually not necessary for a short paper, most APA instructors will want you to create a cover page. Check with your instructor to determine individual paper rubrics and writing requirements.
While in MLA you wrote your name in the top left instead you would put this information on a cover page. Do not put your name in the top left on an APA paper.
While an abstract is usually not necessary for a short paper, most APA instructors will want you to create a cover page. Check with your instructor to determine individual paper rubric and writing requirements.
In 7th edition APA, the Running Head which was s shortened version of your assignment title, is no longer necessary for student assignments (Check with your instructor).
Intext citations
APA citations operate a little differently from MLA citations and sometimes it is not always easy to reprogram your brain to write in APA over MLA. APA will be the standard when you transfer to most universities.
- Titles of books and reports are italicized; titles of articles, chapters, and web pages are in quotation marks.
- Always Double-space your work!
- In Word press TAB to indent the start of your paragraph a 1/2 inch as required by APA.
- When summarizing a work use only the last name and publication date in parenthesis (Macomber, 2020). If using more than three authors you would use et al. so an intext citation would three authors would change to (Macomber et al., 2020).
- When citing a work in-text and naming authors use "and" outside the parenthesis and "&" inside the parenthesis when including two authors of a work.
End references
Like the in-text citations the first change when writing the references is to write the word References rather than work cited which refers to MLA format.
- Your end references should always be in alphabetical order by the author's last name.
- Select all of your end references by clicking Ctrl+A and press Ctrl+T in Microsoft Word to indent the second line of your end references a 1/2 inch.
- Your end references should always be on their own separate pages.
- Don't add any spaces between your end references. Your citations should be in double space.
- When you are in Microsoft Word you can select all of your citations and press Ctrl+T to indent the second line for all citations by a half inch which is proper APA formatting but rarely required.
- A reminder that your references should be listed as References! Work Cited is used for MLA, not APA!
