How to format a paper in APA 7th edition (2026 guide)

TL;DR. APA 7th edition formatting comes down to a handful of consistent rules: 1-inch margins on all sides, an approved font, double spacing throughout, a proper title page, correctly leveled headings, a page number in the top-right of every page, in-text citations that match your reference list, and a References page with hanging indents in alphabetical order. This guide walks through each rule the way it actually appears in a student paper so you can check your own document line by line. If you would rather see every issue flagged at once, you can run your finished Word file through the free APA format checker and get an itemized report of what to fix.

What "APA 7th edition" actually governs

APA style covers two things: how your paper looks (formatting) and how you credit sources (citations). This guide focuses mostly on the formatting layer, because that is what costs students easy points — a paper can be well argued and still lose marks for a missing running head element, single spacing, or a reference list that is not alphabetized.

One important distinction up front: there are two versions of APA 7 papers. The student version (what most coursework uses) and the professional version (for journal submissions). Unless your instructor says otherwise, follow the student rules. The biggest practical difference is that student papers usually do not need a running head (the short title in the header) or an abstract, while professional papers do.

Page setup: margins, font, and spacing

Get these three right and most of your paper is already compliant.

• Margins: 1 inch on all four sides. This is Word's default, but check it if you have ever changed a template.
• Font: APA 7 allows several fonts rather than mandating one. Acceptable choices include 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, 11-point Georgia, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode. Pick one and use it consistently for the entire paper.
• Line spacing: Double-spaced throughout — the whole document, including the title page and the reference list. Do not add extra blank lines between paragraphs.
• Paragraph indent: Indent the first line of every paragraph 0.5 inch (one press of Tab).
• Alignment: Left-aligned text with a ragged (uneven) right edge. Do not justify the text.

A common silent error here is "double spacing" that Word treats as 1.5 or that carries extra "space after paragraph." Make sure paragraph spacing before and after is set to 0.

The title page (student version)

The student title page is centered and appears on page 1. Working down the page, it contains:

1. The paper title, in bold, centered, and positioned in the upper half of the page (roughly three or four lines down). Use title case.
2. One blank double-spaced line, then your name (no title or degree).
3. The institution where you are enrolled (for example, "Department of Psychology, University of X").
4. The course number and name (for example, "PSY 101: Introduction to Psychology").
5. The instructor's name.
6. The due date, written out (for example, "October 3, 2026").

Every line is centered and double-spaced. There is no author note on a student title page.

Page numbers and the header

Every page — including the title page — gets a page number in the top-right corner of the header, starting at 1. In a student paper, that is normally the only thing in the header.

If you are writing a professional paper, the header also contains a running head: an all-caps short version of your title (50 characters or fewer) flush left, with the page number flush right. Students should leave this out unless specifically told to include it.

Headings: the five levels

APA 7 uses a five-level heading system, and the formatting of each level is fixed. You do not number them; you style them. Most student papers only need levels 1 and 2.

• Level 1: Centered, Bold, Title Case. Text starts on the next line.
• Level 2: Flush Left, Bold, Title Case. Text starts on the next line.
• Level 3: Flush Left, Bold Italic, Title Case. Text starts on the next line.
• Level 4: Indented, bold, title case, ending with a period. Your paragraph text runs on the same line.
• Level 5: Indented, bold italic, title case, ending with a period. Text runs on the same line.

Two things students get wrong: the title of the paper is not a Level 1 heading (the bold title at the top of page 2, repeated from the title page, stands alone and centered), and headings are chosen by level of importance, not by how the text looks. Use them in order — you cannot jump from Level 1 to Level 3.

In-text citations

Every idea, paraphrase, or quotation taken from a source needs an in-text citation, and it must point to a matching entry on your References page. APA uses author–date style:

• Parenthetical: (Smith, 2020).
• Narrative: Smith (2020) found that...
• Direct quote: add the page number — (Smith, 2020, p. 14).
• Two authors: cite both every time, joined by "and" in narrative form or "&" inside parentheses — (Smith & Lee, 2020).
• Three or more authors: use the first author plus "et al." from the very first citation — (Smith et al., 2020).

The rule that catches people is consistency: if a source appears in your text, it must appear in your reference list, and vice versa. A formatting tool can flag likely mismatches for you to confirm, but you should always verify the actual source details yourself — no tool should invent a citation.

The reference list

Start the references on a new page. The word References is bold, centered, at the top. Then:

• List entries alphabetically by the first author's last name.
• Apply a hanging indent to every entry: the first line is flush left and every following line is indented 0.5 inch.
• Keep the whole list double-spaced, with no extra blank lines between entries.
• Use sentence case for article and book titles (capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns), but title case for journal names.
• Italicize book titles and journal names, and include a DOI or URL as a full link when one exists.

A basic journal article looks like this:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxx

The hanging indent is the single most-missed formatting rule on the reference page, because it looks fine while you type and only breaks when the entry wraps to a second line.

A quick self-check before you submit

Run through this list on your finished document:

1. 1-inch margins on all sides.
2. One approved font, used everywhere.
3. Double spacing throughout, with no extra paragraph spacing.
4. A complete, centered student title page.
5. Page number top-right on every page.
6. Headings styled by correct level and used in order.
7. Every in-text citation matched by a reference entry.
8. References alphabetized, double-spaced, with hanging indents.

Do it faster

Checking all of this by hand is slow, and it is easy to miss the quiet errors — a stray single-spaced paragraph, a heading at the wrong level, a reference that lost its hanging indent. That is exactly what an automated pass is good at. Upload the Word paper you already wrote to the free APA format checker, and it reads your document and returns an itemized report of the formatting and structural APA 7 issues it finds, so you know precisely what to fix before you hand it in. It does not write your paper or invent sources — it checks and cleans up the formatting of the work you have already done, and hands back a still-editable .docx.

Format is the part of your grade you have the most control over. Nail these rules once and you can reuse them on every paper you write.