APA Essay Outline: APA Paper Outline
APA, American Psychological Association, is a writing format used to cite sources for essays within the social sciences.
The General Guidelines for APA Format Papers
- Your essay should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins on both sides.
- Use 12 point times new roman font.
- Include a page header at the top of every page.
- Should have four major sections: title page, abstract, main body and references.
APA Format Essay Outline
The following is an APA essay outline:
1. Title page.
The title page includes:
- Your essay’s title.
- Author’s name.
- Institutional affiliation.
- Page header.
Your title page should follow the following format:
- Your title should be typed in upper and lowercase letters and centered in the upper half of the page.
- It should not be more than twelve words long.
- It should not have abbreviations.
- All text on the title page should be double-spaced.
- Type the author’s name below the title. It should be as follows: first name, middle initial and last name. Do not include any titles.
- Type the institutional affiliation beneath the author’s name.
2. Abstract.
Your abstract should include:
- Summary of the key points in your essay.
- Your topic.
- Keywords in your paper.
- Participants
- Methods.
It should follow the following format:
- The word abstract should be at the center on the first line of the abstract page. It should not be in bold, italics, quotation marks and should not be underlined.
- Should be a single double-spaced paragraph.
- It should be between 150 to 250 words.
- When listing your keywords, center the text and write the word keywords in italics.
3. The Body
Depending on the length of the paper, the body should contain 3 or more body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should introduce a statement that supports the thesis statement, and provide evidence from well referenced sources to support the claims.
4. References.
Your essay’s references could include:
- Individual resources.
- In-text citations. Follow the author-date method. This means that the author’s last name and the year of publication should appear in the text.
- Capitalize proper nouns including the author's names and initials.
- Capitalize all words that are four letters long when referring to the title of a source within your paper.
- Capitalize the first word after a dash or colon.
- Capitalize both words in a hyphenated compound word when capitalizing titles.
- Use italics and underline the titles of longer works such as books, edited collections, documentaries, television series, albums or movies.
- Include quotation marks around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles, television series episodes and edited collections.
- When citing a work by two authors, name both authors in the single phrase each time you cite the work.
- When citing a work by three to five authors, list all the authors in the single phrase the first time you cite the work.