APA Paper Format

The APA (American Psychological Association) format is used by that association for their own publications and has been adopted by many social and behavioral science publications. The complete style guidelines of the APA are in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association; the sixth edition is the most recent.

Research papers or articles intended for publication in a periodical, however, are not usually formatted the same as those prepared for a graduate school. Consequently, most graduate schools have their own style guides based on, but different from, APA guidelines. Your grad school style guide takes precedence over that of the APA.

The sample Microsoft Word doctoral dissertations linked below illustrate:

Sample formats and page numbering for the major sections of your paper.
A sample APA-style reference page.
How to format headings when you use five levels of headings. For APA formats for two, three, or four heading levels (their styles differ depending on how many levels are used), see Headings.
How to format the table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables.