Complete Title of Your Paper Here

Your Name Here

Tarleton State University

Date

Complete Title of Your Paper Here

The line above is the title of the paper. Please don’t call it “Assignment X.” Use a title that will tell your reader what the paper will be about. The title should be centered, but is not bold or italicized. Margins in the paper should be set at one inch for top, bottom, left, and right. The type is left-justified only—that means the left margin is straight, but the right margin is ragged. Each paragraph is indented five spaces. It is best to use the tab key to indent. The line spacing is double throughout the paper, even on the reference page. There are never any extra spaces after headings or between sections. Use two spaces after the period at the end of sentences. The font style used in this template is Times New Roman and the font size is 12.

This section of the paper is assumed to be the introduction, but does not require the section to be labeled “Introduction.” It is important to be immediately clear what your paper will be about. See Section 2.05 of the APA manual for more information about writing an introduction. The following information regarding sections may or may not be necessary, depending upon the assignment. Use sections if appropriate only.

First Heading

The heading above would be used if you want to have your paper divided into sections based on content. This is the first level of heading, and it is centered and bolded with each word of four letters or more capitalized. The heading should be a short descriptor of the section. Note that not all papers will have headings or subheadings in them.

First Subheading

The subheading above would be used if there are several sections within the topic labeled in a heading. The subheading is flush left and bolded, with each word of four letters or more capitalized.

Second Subheading

APA dictates that you should avoid having only one subsection heading and subsection within a section. In other words, use at least two subheadings under a main heading, or do not use any at all.

When you are ready to write, and after having read these instructions completely, you can delete these directions and start typing. The formatting should stay the same. However, one item that you will have to change is the page header, referred to as the running head in APA style, which is placed at the top of each page along with the page number. The running head is an abbreviated title that is printed at the top of the pages of the paper, so that if the pages are intermixed with other papers they will be identifiable. The title should be no longer than 50 characters, including spaces and punctuation and is just a shortened version of your complete title. Again, do not use “Assignment X” as your running head. Double click on the words in the page header. This should enable you to edit the words. The first page should include the words Running head, followed by a colon and the abbreviated title. All other pages will include only the abbreviated title. The title is in all capital letters. You should not have to edit the page numbers.

In addition to spacing, APA style includes a special way of citing resource articles. See the APA manual for specifics regarding in-text citations. The APA manual also discusses the desired tone of writing, grammar, punctuation, formatting for numbers, and a variety of other important topics. Although the APA style rules are used in this template, the purpose of the template is only to demonstrate spacing and the general parts of the paper. The student will need to refer to the APA manual for other format directions. Citations may or may not be necessary, depending upon your assignment. Just remember that any information that you learned from an article and are including in your paper must be cited (Smith & Jones, 2010) and if you are using a direct quote,” the citation must include a page number” (Peterson, 2010, p. 12). Notice that an ampersand is used instead of ‘and’ in citing two authors and that the period at the end of the sentence goes after the citation. There are many other handy rules in your APA manual.

The reference list should appear at the end of a paper at the beginning of a new page. It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Each source you cite in the paper must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text. A sample reference page is included below; this page includes examples of how to format different reference types (e.g., books, journal articles, information from a website). The examples on the following page include examples taken directly from the APA manual.

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Daresh, J. C. (2004). Beginning the assistant principalship: A practical guide for new school administrators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Herbst-Damm, K. L., & Kulik, J. A. (2005). Volunteer support, marital status, and the survival times of terminally ill patients. Health Psychology, 24, 225-229. doi:10.1037/0278-6133.24.2.225

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2003). Managing asthma: A guide for schools (NIH Publication No. 02-2650). Retrieved from http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/
health/prof/asthma/asth_sch.pdf