Formatting APA Paper Cover Page

When students tackle papers with an APA format, the official APA website or Purdue OWL APA page are usually the go-to resources. Anything you need to know about APA is on those pages, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information. The best way to learn is through a guide that breaks it all down into the basic requirements, which is exactly what we’re going to provide you with now. First things first – let’s get to grips with the basic logic of APA, and the general requirements that you’ll need to know.

General Requirements

These are the guidelines that you need to apply to all the written content in your paper. To create a proper cover page APA style, a student must:

Use 12 point Times New Roman font
Use double Spacing
Write the page number in the top right
Create 1-inch margins on the sides.

These guidelines aren’t unique to APA style paper cover page – other styles use some or all of these rules and more. The following section covers the rules that are more particular to the APA formatting style specifically.

APA Style Cover Page Guidelines

As you may know, you’re granted a little leeway with the APA style cover page. There’s more than one way to write it, meaning that you have more freedom and perhaps a little less certainty. For some, this is a good thing, but sometimes people prefer to know exactly what to do! We'll start with the fundamental requirements. Every APA format cover page needs the following:

The title
The student’s name
The educational institution

Whatever else you use, those are mandatory for every APA title page. Optionally, you may choose to include:

An author’s note
Your class and the date

Your cover page APA style can definitely include these things, but leaving them out won't result in a penalty. You can ask your professor whether they think the date and class are necessary for that particular class, and an author's note is generally more for scientific articles than a student APA cover page. The APA cover page for a scientific article usually includes contact details for the author and a list of their achievements, which is the only reason for the inclusion of the author’s note in that case – so if that’s not what you’re doing, don’t worry, you don’t need it.

The running head is another feature of your APA title page that you need to bear in mind. An example is below: Running head: TYPE YOUR PAPER TITLE IN ALL CAPS HERE.

Most other styles contain the title, but it’s important to note that the APA format paper cover page requires you to actually write the words “running head” before the title. This rule, however, only goes for the very first page of your work. All of the other pages (that is, starting from page 2 till your references section) will only contain the title in caps, no ‘running head’ phrase.

Finally, make sure the page number (in this case, 1) does not show on your APA format cover page.

Do I need an abstract for after APA format paper cover page?

Like with the cover page features, this varies from paper to paper depending on the length and complexity of what you’re writing. Basically, the function of the abstract is to break down the work into bite-size chunks to be reviewed before reading the entire piece. Often, you don’t need one – if your paper isn’t that long or multi-faceted, and an APA style paper cover page is enough to begin the text. However, for some longer papers an abstract is required after the cover page.

If your paper is eight pages long and has many sections, you should include an abstract. How do you write one? Let's pretend this guide itself needs an APA abstract. It would look something like this:

Abstract

The guide provides an overview of APA format, specifically dealing with the formatting of a cover page, citations, bibliography […] - 200 words or under is a good general rule of thumb to go by when you’re writing your paper.

Keywords: APA essay, write my essay, APA references.

For a short paper, after your APA format cover page just go straight to the introduction. Let’s talk about the guidelines for that in the section below.

APA citation format

APA citation guidelines are similar to those used by other academic formatting styles. For word by word quotes, APA citation format uses words framed in quotation marks with the source in brackets. For paraphrasing, you still need to mention the last name of the writer and the year of publication in brackets.

For sources with one author: “quote goes here” (Author, 2017).
For two authors, use this APA citation format: “quote goes here” (Author & Author, 2017).
For three or more, separate each name with a comma: (Author1, Author2, Author3, 2017).
For all of the following references to the same source (Author1 et. al, 2017).

APA reference page structure

The purpose of the ‘write my essay’ process is to credit the authors who developed the subject with their own work. APA bibliography page includes the sources you used directly (quoted/paraphrased) and indirectly (consulted during research). That is why it is also called APA reference page, or the references. The following requirements are mandatory:

Center the word References
Page title contains no bold, caps, or italics
Structure all sources in alphabetical order
Every source starts with a new line
When the source requires more than one line, indent every line except the first one

Your APA bibliography sources should contain this information in the same order:

Author’s last name and first name initial
The year the source was published
The title of the paper/book
The place of publication

Exceptions can occur as follows. Not all sources have an author or year of publication. Some have been translated or republished. You can consult the purdue owl apa section for the specific rules to each case study, or simply avoid mentioning sources that will complicate your sourcing process.

Examples:

A book with an author
Sheppard, L. (2015). Book Title. New York, NY: NY Publishing.

A book without an author
Book Title (2015).New York, NY: NY Publishing.

A source without a publication date
Sheppard, L. (n.d.). Source Title. New York, NY: NY Publishing.

Note: n.d. stands for ‘no date’.

Periodical sources
Book titles are in italics, but journals or periodicals have regularly formatted article titles. However, the when referring to an article from a journal or any other periodical, though, the title of the actual article will remain regular. The title and the serial number of a periodical, however, is italicized. Example:

Mahony, K. (2011). Parenting and Childhood. Managing children in the early years. Washington DC Publications.

A printed vs. online source
APA does not emphasize indicating whether a source is digital, but it requires the place of publication to be indicated. Example:

Maloney, C. (2009). In the Face of Difficulties, Women in Military Persist and Excel. Web. Retrieved from http://www.wifle.org/pdf/study_faceofchallenges.pdf

It’s important to check that your link is not blue or highlighted. As you are checking out the fonts here, make sure to check the font you used in the running head, too. It has to be Times New Roman, 12-point - just like the body of your paper, but most apps will use their default settings instead of the ones you need for an APA format paper. That’s it - you should be done by now!