Headings

Headings help organize ideas and should be used for longer papers.

Level One

     Center and bold. Each word begins with a capital letter- go to next line

Level Two

      Left justified and bold.  Each word begins with a capital letter- go to next line

      Level three. Left justified- then indent and bold with a period.  Only the first word is capitalized. Content begins on this line.

      Level four. Left justified- then indent, bold and italicize with a period.  Only the first word is capitalized. Content begins on this line.

      Level five. Left justified- then indent and italicize with a period.  Only the first word is capitalized. Content begins on this line.

Reference

American Psychological Association. (2010).  Publication manual of the American Psychological

         Association (6th ed.).

Formatting a Reference Page

As a basic overview

• Write the word References centered on the page.  Do not bold the word.
• The reference page should be Times New Roman size 12 font and double spaced like the rest of the paper.
•  List all the references in alphabetical order by the author's last name .
• Any citation listed in the paper must be listed on the reference pages.
• Each reference is formatted with  a hanging indent.  This means that the second line of the reference is indented 5 spaces. 
• Any information that is cited in the paper needs to be listed on the reference page.
• Personal communication or classics do not have to be listed on the reference page.
• The reference page has the running header for the paper.

A sample reference page looks like this (but double spaced):

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological
           Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.
APA.org (2011). APA style: basics of APA. Style Retrieved from http://flash1r.apa.org/apastyle
              /basics/index.htm
Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1999). Investing in teaching as a learning
            profession: Policy problems and prospects. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.),
            Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 376-411). San
            Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Dickens, S. C. (2000). How to negotiate mergers in the corporate world. In W. Success, J. A. Boss
            & R. Supervisors (Eds.), Success in the corporate world (pp. 124-132 ). New York, NY:
            Winsome Books.
Franke, M. L., Carpenter, T. P., Levi, L. W., & Fennema, E. (1998). Teachers as learners: Developing
             understanding through children's thinking. San Diego, CA: American Educational Research
             Association.
Wood, D. (2007). Teachers' learning communities: Catalyst for change or a new infrastructure for
            the status quo? Teachers College Record, 109(3), 40.

Explanation of each part

Author

• The author portion of the reference begins with the first authors last name and uses only their initials and a period for first and middle name. 
• If there is more than one author, list the authors in the order that they are written in the work.  Each author is separated by a comma and the last author has an "&" sign before their name. 
• If there is no clear author such as the reference posted for APA.org, you use the organization. 

Year

• The year goes inside parenthesis with a period after.

Title

• If the title is the name of a book or an article on a website- italicize.  If it is the name of an article do not italicize because the journal will be italicized.  
• Capitalize proper nouns, the first word of the title and the first word after a semicolon.

Publisher

• First list the city and state in this format City, ST:  The city name is followed by a comma.  The state is only two letter abbreviation and a colon follows.
• After the colon, the name of the publisher is written.

Journals

•  If the reference is a journal article, the title of the article is followed by the name of the journal in italics, comma, the number of the publication, comma, and then the page numbers with a period at the end.
• See Wood reference example provided above.

Edited Books

• This has the title of the section in the book followed by a period.  The word "In" and the publisher's name followed by "(Eds),"
• The title of the book then follows with the page number in parenthesis and the city of the publisher 
• See Darling-Hammond and Dickens reference example provided above.

Websites

• Websites have the author, year, title format that is the same.  After the title, it should state "Retrieved from" and then the URL for the information referencing.
• See APA reference example provided above.

Reference

American Psychological Association. (2010).  Publication manual of the American Psychological

         Association (6th ed.).

Format for Citations

When there is one author your citations should look like this.
Mary was a little girl who lived in England a long time ago (Goose, 2012).

When there are two authors your citations should look like this.
Mary’s favorite animal was the lamb (Mother & Goose, 2012).

If it is a quote you are citing and the quote is less than 40 words your citation should follow this format with page number or paragraph (if from a website).
“Mary had a little lamb” (Goose, 2012, para. 1).

If the quote is more than 40 words it should be formatted  in a block format with each line indented five spaces from the left.  It needs to include the author(s) last name, publication year, and page number or paragraph number or the quote  It should look like this.
According to Goose (2012):
            Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb,
            Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow.
            Everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went,
            Everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.
            She followed her to school one day, school one day, school one day,
            She followed her to school one day and that was against the rules. (p. 4)

If you need more information on formatting a citation for a quote click here.

Though this post has some basic formats you should be familiar with and may refer to, I strongly advise you to read the APA manual and get familiar with all that is necessary to have a properly APA formatted paper.

Reference

American Psychological Association. (2010).  Publication manual of the American Psychological

         Association (6th ed.).

Q & A

Please post any questions in this thread.

Title Page

Your title page needs to have a heading that is centered in the top half of the page and double-spaced:  The running header needs to be included in a header (not typed straight into the paper).  To do this in Word click on Insert- Header- New.

At the bottom of the page- click insert- page break.  This forces all following text to start on a new page.

Reference

American Psychological Association. (2010).  Publication manual of the American Psychological

         Association (6th ed.).