Nursing Resources at FRCC LC

What is APA Style?

APA Style establishes standards of written communication concerning:

• the organization of content
• writing style
• citing references
• and how to prepare a manuscript for publication in certain disciplines.

Why Use APA?

Aside from simplifying the work of editors by having everyone use the same format for a given publication, using APA Style makes it easier for readers to understand a text by providing a familiar structure they can follow. Abiding by APA's standards as a writer will allow you to:

• provide readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more efficiently and to locate information of interest to them
• allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with unfamiliar formatting
• and establish your credibility or ethos in the field by demonstrating an awareness of your audience and their needs as fellow researchers.

Who Should Use APA?

APA Style provides fairly comprehensive guidelines for writing academic papers regardless of subject or discipline. However, traditionally, APA is most frequently used by writers and students in:

• Social Sciences, such as Psychology, Linguistics, Sociology, Economics, and Criminology
• Business
• Nursing

If you are a student, consult with an instructor to learn what style your discipline uses before using APA Style in your work. 

There are several steps you must take to prepare a new document for APA style before you start writing your paper:

• Make sure the paper size is 8.5″ x 11″ (known as ‘Letter’ in most word processors).
• Set the margin size to 1″ on all sides (2.54cm).
• Change the line spacing to double-spaced.
• Add page numbers to the top-right corner of every page.
• Add a running head to the top-left corner of every page.
  

The title page (also known as the cover page) is the front page of your paper. It should contain the title of the paper, your name, and the institution for which you writing. These details should be aligned in the middle of the page.

The running head should be in the top-left corner of the page in uppercase, prepended only on the front page with “Running head:”. The first page number — generally page 1 — should be in the top-right corner of the page. Both the page number and the running head should be a half inch from the top of the page.

The title of the paper can contain upper and lowercase letters, and ideally should be no more than 12 words in length. It should be direct, and should not contain abbreviations or other unnecessary words. It should not span longer than 2 lines. The first letter of each word should be uppercase, except for articles (a, an, the), and conjunctions (and, but, for, or, yet).

Underneath the title should be your name (or the author’s name if you’re not the author). It should be displayed as the first name, middle initial, and last name. Do not add titles (such as Dr.) to the beginning, or degrees (such as PhD) to the end of an author’s name.

Finally, underneath the author’s name, state the full name of the institution or school you’re writing the paper for.

The font for all text on the title page should be Times New Roman, size 12pt, with double line-spacing.

A correct title page will look like the below image:

An APA reference page is a list of sources you’ve mentioned or used throughout your writing, formatted in the APA style, and should be included at the very end of your paper. The details of each source must be displayed in a specific way, depending on the type of the source (websites, books, journals, or other sources).

The Basics

A Reference Page must:

• Have the title of ‘Reference List‘ at the very top
• Show every source you’ve directly referenced in your paper, or taken data from to help you write your paper.
• List all sources in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. For example, a source by Albert Einstein would be higher in the list than a source by Elon Musk, as the E in Einstein comes before the M in Musk alphabetically.
• Use a hanging indent for each entry after the first line, indented by half an inch from the left margin.
• Retain all original punctuation and formatting for any names and titles of the sources.

Example APA papers can be found here:

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/sample-papers