Here’s an APA format example of a table:


Written by Mariel Lorenz
This guide for APA was adapted from: Hacker, D. (2003). A Writer' Reference. (5th ed.). Boston: St. Martin's.
American Psychological Association. (2001).
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Updated January 28, 2005 by Renee Brown


This page provides you with an overview of APA format, 7th edition. Included is information about referencing, various citation formats with examples for each source type, and other helpful information.

Looking for a full visual of a page of references? Scroll down and take a peek at our APA format essay example towards the bottom of this page. You’ll see a list of references and you can gain a sense of how they look.

There are many commonly used figures in papers. Examples APA Format:

If you’re looking for , check out the Citation Machine MLA Guide. Also, visit the Citation Machine homepage to use the APA formatter, which is an APA citation generator, and to see .

Note: If you are assigned a research paper in APA style for one of your courses, it's a good idea to ask your instructor the questions below. He or she will be able to explain details about the requirements for the paper. For now, we will go over the basic instructions of how to use in-text citations and how to set up the reference page.

This page contains sample papers formatted in seventh edition APA Style. The sample papers show the format that authors should use to submit a manuscript for publication in a professional journal and that students should use to submit a paper to an instructor for a course assignment. You can download the Word files to use as templates and edit them as needed for the purposes of your own papers.

An APA format citation is an APA format in-text citation. These are found within your paper, anytime a quote or paraphrase is included. They usually only include the name of the author and the date the source was published.


APA Online Magazine Citation Example

APA style is one of the most commonly used citation styles used to prevent plagiarism. Here’s more on .
Let’s get this statement out of the way before you become confused: An APA format reference and an APA format citation are two different things! We understand that many teachers and professors use the terms as if they’re synonyms, but according to this specific style, they are two separate things, with different purposes, and styled differently.

precedes page numbers for a newspaper reference in APA style.

The author’s names are structured differently if there is more than one author. Things will also look different if there isn’t an author at all (which is sometimes the case with website pages). For more information on APA citation format, check out this page on the topic: and . There is also more information in the official manual in chapter 8.

Example of a student title page in APA 7 format

The official APA format book was primarily created to aid individuals with submitting their paper for publication in a professional journal. Many schools adopt certain parts of the handbook and modify sections to match their preference. To see an example of an APA format research paper, with the spacing we believe is most commonly and acceptable to use, scroll down and see section D.

Formatting a College Essay — APA Style

An abstract is written after your paper is completed. It is typically one paragraph of 300 words or less that summarizes your paper and provides enough information so that the reader can decide whether it would be useful to read the rest of the paper. It includes the purpose of the study, the design of your study (methods), results or findings, and conclusions. In other words, an abstract describes what you set out to do, how you did it, your results, and your conclusions based on the results.

Formatting an Essay in APA Style

If this is all a bit much, and you’re simply looking for help with your references, try the . Our APA formatter creates your references in just a few clicks. APA citation format is easier than you think thanks to our innovative, automatic tool.