How to Write an Essay in APA Format?

The saying goes that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But a good cover can still make a good first impression, especially if it’s not a book, but a student paper. That’s what formatting is for. It makes professors’ lives easier, but it also shows your ability to follow instructions and your attention to detail. Overall, learning how to write an essay in APA format fosters valuable soft skills. And it boosts your GPA, too.

In this post, we’ll cover the basics of APA essay format, but if you don’t have the time to nitpick your paper, let us help! When you buy essay from EssayMarket, you get a submission-ready piece with proper formatting in place.

What Is APA Style?

APA is one of many formatting styles. It’s a set of rules for formatting the body of your paper, as well as the reference list.
APA is short for American Psychological Association. When instructors assign an essay in APA, they expect your paper to read a certain way. Ignore this requirement, and you’re losing points off your grade or failing the assignment altogether.
APA is the golden standard for Psychology, Social Sciences, Economics, Business, and other soft sciences. The MLA format is mostly used in English and other language and literature classes. But these aren’t the only two formats possible. You may encounter various formatting styles, including Harvard, Chicago, IEEE, and others.
Disclaimer: This post is too short to cover everything there is to know about the APA formatting. We’ll discuss the most commonly used basics of APA format, but if you have a unique case or aren’t sure about the proper way to format any part of your paper, check the latest edition of the official style guide.

APA Essay Format Step by Step

Scared of messing up the formatting? It’s because, like your peers, you don’t know how to write an essay in APA format and where to start. To make your life easier, let’s break this task into a few bite-sized steps.

Start with the Title Page

Unless your instructor specifies otherwise, the APA style essay title page should include:

1. Paper title — centered, bold, title case
2. Your name — centered
3. School name — centered, title case
4. Class name — centered, title case
5. Professor’s name — centered
6. Due date — centered

Do not include the page number on the title page, but follow the general formatting rules for line spacing, margins, etc. (see below). According to the 7th edition, a student essay in APA format does not have to use the running head, so you can skip it on the title page and elsewhere in the paper.

Write Your Essay

Many students believe that writing an essay in APA format is just about the formatting. But that’s not true. The style guide includes writing requirements, too.

Here are a few major writing style requirements for an APA essay format:

• Choose a suitable tone of voice. Since you’re dealing with an academic paper, your tone should be formal, but not devoid of life or emotion. Avoid using casual lingo. And skip professional jargon as well. Think of the target audience of your paper and tailor your tone accordingly.
• Use the same verb tense throughout each section of the paper. For example, use the present tense for explaining research methodology and conclusions, but use the past tense to describe the study results.
• Prioritize active voice and strong verbs. Swap adverbs for descriptive verbs (“rush” instead of “go quickly”) and avoid using passive voice, which can make your writing harder to understand.
• Use broad gender-neutral terms, where appropriate. For example, use “entrepreneurs” instead of “businessmen” or “firefighters” instead of “firemen”. When describing people, put the person first before adding a descriptor: “people with disabilities” instead of “disabled people”.
• Keep abbreviations to a minimum. If it’s used one or two times, spell it out, but if it’s more common, include the full name before introducing an abbreviation in parentheses. Do not add periods between letters.
• Remember the Oxford comma. In APA essay format, the Oxford comma is mandatory. It’s a comma before “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items.

Format the Body of the Paper

Formatting is generally the last post-writing task. Once you’re happy with the contents of your paper after a round or two of editing and proofreading using our recommendations on how to write an essay in APA, it’s time to make your paper look good.

General Requirements

Every essay in APA format must follow these basic rules:

• Margins — 1 inch or more on all sides
• Line spacing — double throughout the paper
• Ident — 0.5 inch for the first line of every paragraph, consistent throughout the paper
• Font — Times New Roman or another readable serif font, size 12 pt and up
• Page number — Arabic numerals in the top right corner of every page, except the title page
• Text alignment — left-aligned, except for Level 1 heading

Headings

Headings are a convenient visual and organizational tool for academic writing. The APA style guide supports five levels of headings, which rely on different formatting:

• Level 1 heading — centered, bold, title case, start text on a new line.
• Level 2 heading — left-aligned, no indent, bold, title case, start text on a new line.
• Level 3 heading — left-aligned, no indent, bold, italics, title case, end with a period, start text on a new line.
• Level 4 heading — left-aligned, with indent, bold, title case, end with a period, continue text on the same line.
• Level 5 heading — left-aligned, with indent, bold, italics, title case, end with a period, continue text on the same line.

Headings use the same double-spaced lines as the rest of the paper. You don’t have to include empty lines or additional spaces between headings and the body of the text.

Numbers

The rule of thumb is to spell out the numerals up to ten and use Arabic numbers for everything above. But you should use numbers:

• In a table or on a chart
• Referencing a table or a chart: See Table 2.
• When using numbers with units of measurement: 3 in., 5 lbs.
• Referencing time, age, date, etc.: 4 AM, 10 years old.
• In proper names, you should use the accepted names, like World War II or the Hundred Years’ War. And if you wish to use the plural form, skip the apostrophe (in the 50s).

Visuals

If your essay in APA format includes tables, they should follow these formatting rules:

• Table number — left aligned, without an indent, bold
• Table title — left aligned, without an indent, italics, title case
• Column headings — center aligned, title case
• Row titles — left aligned, title case
• Row data — centered
• Note — “Note” in italics with a period, without an indent

Figures have similar formatting requirements:

• Figure number — left aligned, without an indent, bold
• Figure title — left aligned, without an indent, italics, title case
• Note — “Note” in italics with a period, without an indent

Both tables and figures should be left-aligned and use consecutive numbering. You should only include visuals that supplement your text, adding value to your paper.

Format In-Text Citations and a Reference List

APA is the “author-date” citation style, meaning that for every publication you cite, you should include the name of its author(s) and the publication date. They usually come in parentheses at the end of the sentence before the period. There’s only a slight difference depending on the number of authors:

• If there’s one author, include their last name and publication date: (Cole, 2024).
• If there are two authors, list both of them: (Cole & Brown, 2024).
• If there are three or more authors, include the first one: (Cole et al., 2024).

You can also use narrative citations, building the authors’ names into the sentence. In this case, include the publication date in parentheses right after the name.

We won’t go into the specifics of how to format a reference list for an essay in APA style, because there are just too many rules and exceptions. But here are a few basic considerations to remember:

• “References” is a Level 1 heading, starting on a new page.
• Alphabetize the references by the first author’s name.
• For books, use the following format: Author, A. A. (Year). Book Title. Publisher.
• For articles with one or two authors: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Article Title. Journal Name, Volume (issue), page numbers.
• For articles with three or more authors: Author, A. A. et al. (Year). Article Title. Journal Name, Volume (issue), page numbers.
• For websites: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL.

There are lots of exceptions to these rules, so make sure to check the complete APA style guide to make sure your citations and the reference list are perfect.

Create an APA Essay Format Template

If you only need to write a single essay in APA style, using our short guide is the way to go. But if at least half of your papers are supposed to be formatted in APA, checking the style guide every time will get old quickly. That’s why you need an APA template.

Every word processor has style tools, whether you use Google Docs, Office 365, or any other suite. Your goal is to create a template that will automatically take care of the basics, like margins, font, indents, headings, etc. This will free up your time and let you focus on the paper. Once it’s ready, you can just paste the text into the template file (or use it from the get-go) and check your in-text citations and reference list.

Setting up an APA style essay template can take some time, but it’ll save you much more in the long run. By the way, you can also create templates for other styles and keep them on hand for assignments in MLA or Chicago.

Conclusion

Writing an essay in APA format is easier than it seems. It will only take you a couple of tries to get everything right, and once you do, formatting essays will become second nature (at least until you encounter a new and unfamiliar formatting style).

Still, it’s a time-consuming and energy-sapping task, which you can easily outsource to our writers. They can deliver a perfectly formatted essay in just a few hours, but you can also hire our pros to edit and proofread your paper or write the whole thing from scratch. We’re here to address your every school need.