APA 7 title page rules for student papers (with the exact line order)

An APA 7 student title page is a separate page with seven elements in a fixed order, all centred and double-spaced: the paper title in bold, one blank line, then the author's name, the department and university, the course number and name, the instructor's name, and the due date. A page number sits in the top-right corner. The text of the paper starts on the next page with the title repeated in bold. If you would rather have this checked than count lines, upload the paper to the free APA format checker; it builds the title page and reports on the rest.

The seven elements, in order

1. Paper title — bold, centred, title case, three or four lines below the top margin. Keep it to about twelve words; no abbreviations.
2. One blank double-spaced line.
3. Author name — first name, middle initial, last name. No titles or degrees.
4. Affiliation — the department and the university, for example School of Nursing, University of Texas at Tyler.
5. Course — number and name as the syllabus writes it: NURS 5301: Translational Science I.
6. Instructor — name and title as they prefer, for example Dr. Christian End.
7. Due date — spelled out: September 16, 2026.

Everything is centred, double-spaced, in the same 12-point font as the paper. No bold except the title, no italics, no underlining.

Page number, no running head

Student papers in APA 7 do not carry a running head. They do carry a page number in the top-right corner of every page, starting with 1 on the title page. The number lives in the header, not in the text.

The rule most papers break

The text begins on page 2. The first line of page 2 is the paper's title again, bold and centred, followed by the first paragraph. Papers that put the title block and the opening paragraph on the same page are the single most common APA deduction, and it is a page break, not a formatting subtlety. In Word: put the cursor before the repeated title and press Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac).

What a professional paper adds

If your instructor asks for the professional (journal-submission) variant, the differences are a running head in the header of every page (the title shortened to 50 characters, in capitals, left-aligned), an author note at the bottom of the title page, and no course or instructor lines. Unless you have been told otherwise, use the student version.

Checking it automatically

Upload the Word file to the APA title page tool with the seven lines typed at the top. It detects the title block, positions it, inserts the page break, repeats the title on page 2 and adds the page numbers, then reports on headings, references and citations in the same run. Your wording is never changed.