APA 7th referencing guide

Below you'll find answers to questions I'm often asked.  If you're looking for anything else, use the Purdue OWL link to the right.

General

• Your essay should be double-spaced, with 1 inch margins on all sides.  Include a page header at the top of every page. For a professional paper, this includes your paper title and the page number.  For a student paper, this only includes the page number. 
• The APA don't specify a specific font to use, but it does recommend a few widely available fonts. These include sans  11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or 10-point Computer Modern.
• Align the text to the left and leave the right margin uneven.
• Indent the first line of every paragraph 0.5 inches.
• Do not manually insert line breaks in to long DOIs / URLs, but if your computer automatically does this, then that's fine.
• For short quotations (fewer than 40 words) you must incorporate it in to the text by putting the entire quotation in quotation marks and giving the page reference as follows, otherwise you are plagiarising their work.
• For longer quotation (40 or more words), don’t use quotation marks, but start the quotation on a new line, indented by 0.5 inches if there are additional paragraphs within the quotation, indent the first line of each subsequent paragraph by 0.5 inches. Double space the entire quotation, don’t put an additional space before or after it. 

Numbers & statistics

• In general, you should spell out numbers below 10 in words (eight, two), and use numerals for anything 10 and higher (10, 67). 

• You should use Arabic numerals (1, 7) instead of Roman numerals (II, XI) unless the Roman numerals are part of established terminology in your field. 

• In numbers greater than 1,000, use commas to separate groups of three digits except in page numbers, binary code, serial numbers, temperatures, acoustic frequencies, and degrees of freedom. 
• Do not add apostrophes when writing a plural of a number (the 2000s, the 70s).

Tables and Figures

• Tables and figures supplement the text, so you should refer to all tables and figures used and explain what the reader should look for when using the table or figure.
• If you are using figures, tables and/or data from other sources, ensure you gather all the information you'll need to accurately document your sources.
• Each table and figure must be intelligible without reference to the text, so be sure to include an explanation of every abbreviation (except the standard statistical symbols and abbreviations). 
• Number all tables sequentially as you refer to them in the text (Table 1, Table 2, etc.), likewise for figures (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).
• Abbreviations, terminology, and probability level values must be consistent across tables and figures in the same article. 
• Data in a table that would require only two or fewer columns and rows should be presented in the text. More complex data is better presented in tabular format. In order for quantitative data to be presented clearly and efficiently, it must be arranged logically, e.g. data to be compared must be presented next to one another (before/after, young/old, male/female, etc.), and statistical information (means, standard deviations, N values) must be presented in separate parts of the table. 

TABLE CHECKLIST

(Taken from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed., Section 7.20)

• Is the table necessary?
• Are all comparable tables presented consistently?
• Are all tables numbered with Arabic numerals in the order they are mentioned in the text?
• Is the table number bold and left-aligned?
• Are all tables referred to in the text?
• Is the title brief but explanatory? Is it presented in italicized title case and left-aligned?
• Does every column have a column heading? Are column headings centered?
• Are all abbreviations; special use of italics, parentheses, and dashes; and special symbols explained?
• Are the notes organized according to the convention of general, specific, probability?
• Are table borders correctly used (top and bottom of table, beneath column headings, above table spanners)?
• Does the table use correct line spacing (double for the table number, title, and notes; single, one and a half, or double for the body)?
• Are entries in the left column left-aligned beneath the centered stub heading? Are all other column headings and cell entries centered?
• If the table or its data are from another source, is the source properly cited? Is permission necessary to reproduce the table?

Purdue OWL provides a comprehensive style guide for APA 7th (click the owl!).  Alternatively, the library has physical copies of the APA 7th guide for your to borrow, available via Primo.