The APA document format is the official style of the American Psychological Association (APA). APA, like MLA format, is a specific type of document format used for certain types of academic papers.
APA is often used in academic papers, specifically those related to psychology, education, and other social sciences. If you’ve never created a Word document in APA style before, you may have a hard time understanding it, but it’s easy once you know the rules.
If you want to know how to format APA style in Microsoft Word, this is what you will have to do.
How to Format a Microsoft Word Document APA Style
APA style is like other academic paper styles: it’s about the rules your paper must follow. Fortunately, Microsoft Word makes it easy to set up a document to follow APA format.
To write an APA style document in Microsoft Word:
- First, set your page margins to 1 inch on each side by clicking the tab. Provision and then pressing Margins > Normal.
- Set the font Times New Roman in the tab of Start.
- Change the Font size a 12 using the dropdown menu.
- Enable the text to double space by choosing Start, and then pressing the tool Spacing between lines and paragraphs in the section Paragraph.
- From the dropdown menu, choose 2.0 so that the text is double spaced.
- To check that there are no extra spaces between paragraphs in your document, press the button again. Spacing between lines and paragraphs and select Remove space after paragraph on the menu.
Configure the document header
At this point, your document should be almost formatted for APA, but you’ll need to make some additional changes to your heading to insert the page numbers.
To set up your document header for APA:
- press the tab Insert from the ribbon bar.
- Press Page number and mouse over top of page.
- In the options, select Raw number 3.
- Word will switch to editing mode. Header, where you will see the page number appear on the right hand side.
- With the number selected, press Start, and then adjust the font and font size to Times New Roman Y 12.
- If you are going to add a title, use capital letters to do it: press the caps lock key and type the title of your work.
- After typing the title, press the space key once to create a space between the title and the page number.
- You’ll want to move the title to the left, so select the title and hit Align to the left on the tab Start.
- The title is now aligned to the left, but so is the page number. To fix this, make sure the blinking cursor is directly to the left of the page number.
- Click on the tab Header and footerand select Insert alignment tab.
- When the tab window appears tabulation of Alignmentclick on Right and in To accept.
- If all goes well, you should see the page number on the right and the title on the left: your header is now set to APA.
Set up a title page
Your document is now ready for APA formatting with Times New Roman and 12 point font size in the body and header. The next step is to create a title page.
To add a title page to Word:
- Click on an open area on your first page.
- Set the text as Center in the section Paragraph of the tab Start.
- Write the title of your paper, making sure to capitalize the most important terms.
- Press Enter to move to a new line and type your name.
- press again Enter to write the name of the institution.
- Make any necessary style changes to your document, making sure they follow the APA rules.
Writing academic documents in Microsoft Word
The above steps will help you set up APA style formatting in a Microsoft Word document. Of course, the context and citations are up to you. Your instructor may require additional information on the title page, such as your student number and current date, so be sure to check this before writing your paper.
In addition to APA style, you can also use the MLA format in Word. In addition to setting up APA or MLA formatting in Word, you can insert custom headers and footers and insert and format a text box in word.
