Handouts

1. Papers must be typed or printed on a computer.

2. Use double spacing throughout the paper.

3. Use one inch margins on the left, right, top, and bottom of the page.

4. Use normal paragraphs in which the first line is indented five characters for all paragraphs in the manuscript except the abstract, block quotes, titles and headings, subheadings, references, table titles, notes, and figure captions.

5. Use a 12 point font.

6. Single space after sentences.

7. Do not hyphenate words at the end of a line.

8. Spell out abbreviated terms the first time, in the abstract and again in the body of the manuscript.

9. Spell out numbers when they are the first words of a sentence.

1. In the abstract, use digits for all numbers except when they begin a sentence.

2. Be consistent with number formats. Numbers should all be presented with the same number of decimal places.

3. APA measurement reporting uses metric units (e.g. centimeters and meters).

1. If you use someone's words or ideas, you must give them credit with a citation.

2. There are different methods to cite a reference in the text (e.g., Sentence with cited information (author(s) last name, publication year), Author(s) last name (publication year) noted that cited information..., or In <publication year>, <author(s) last name> reported cited information…)

3. The first time the reference is cited in the text, all authors’ last names are spelled out. Articles that have three or more authors use the Latin abbreviation et al. for "and others" when the reference is cited after the first time.

4. For citations in parentheses the ampersand ('&') is used instead of "and".

5. Multiple citations in parentheses are placed alphabetically and are separated by a semicolon and a space.

6. Avoid using direct quotes. Three or four direct quotes in a 10 page paper is upper limit. Also, page numbers are given for direct quotes.

7. Display a quotation of more than 40 words as free-standing block of text indented 5 spaces from the left margin (doubles spaced as usual). Omit the quotation marks and include the page number in parentheses after the last period. Also, if the quotation is more than one paragraph, indent the first line of the second and any additional paragraphs 5 spaces.

1. Start references on a new page. Center the word References at the top and double space.

2. Any citations made in the manuscript must be listed in the references.

3. References are alphabetized by the publication‘s first author’s last name.

4. A hanging indent is employed for each reference. The first line is not indented and the rest are five-space indented.

5. For each author, give the last name followed by a comma and the first (and middle) initials followed by periods.

6. Separate multiple authors with commas and the last author with the ampersand ('&') rather than the word "and".

7. After the author(s) comes the year (in parentheses and followed by a period).

8. For a journal reference, italicize the title of the journal and the volume number. Capitalize the important words of the journal title.

9. For a book reference, just italicize the title. Only capitalize the first word of the title. Do include the city, state (as a two-letter abbreviation without periods), and the publisher's name.

Different types of papers: