Here’s a broad guide to the APA v7 formatting as it applies to Microsoft Word. Getting your APA formatting right starts with proper page setup. From 1-inch margins and approved fonts to double spacing and page headers, small details can make a big difference to your final grade or publication.
The final arbiter of ‘correct formatting’ for student papers is your lecturer. He or she has the last word, not us, not the APA and certainly not Microsoft.
APA 7th edition (the current standard, published 2019) requires:
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches (US Letter)
- A4 paper (210 x 297mm / 8.27 x 11.69 inches) is acceptable for authors outside North America.
- Margins: 1 inch on all four sides
- Font: 12pt Times New Roman is traditional, but APA 7 also accepts
- 11pt Calibri (used in the Word APA template)
- 11pt Arial
- 10pt Lucida Sans Unicode
- Line spacing: Double-spaced throughout including the reference list
- Paragraph indents: 0.5 inches for the first line of every paragraph
Page Numbers and the Running Head
Every page needs a page number in the top-right header. For student papers (the most common case), that’s all you need in the header.
For professional/published papers, you also need a running head — a shortened version of your title in ALL CAPS, flush left in the header, with the page number flush right on the same line.
Word handles this with Insert | Header. Use a two-column table inside the header, or set a right-aligned tab stop at the right margin for the page number.
Title Page
APA requires a specific title page layout:
- Title in bold, centered, in the upper half of the page
- Your name (no honorifics like “Dr.”)
- Institution name
- Course number and name
- Instructor name
- Due date
All of this is centered and double-spaced.
Headings: Five Levels, All Different
APA uses up to five heading levels to organize a paper. You won’t always need all five, but they must follow this exact hierarchy:
| Level | Format |
| 1 | Bold, Centered, Title Case |
| 2 | Bold, Left-Aligned, Title Case |
| 3 | Bold Italic, Left-Aligned, Title Case |
| 4 | Bold Italic, Indented, Title Case, ending with a period. Body text continues on same line. |
| 5 | Italic, Indented, Title Case, ending with a period. Body text continues on same line. |
The smart way to handle this in Word is to modify the built-in Heading 1–5 styles to match APA requirements.
In-Text Citations
APA uses an author-date system. Every time you reference someone else’s work, you include the author’s last name and year in parentheses:
- One author: (Smith, 2021)
- Direct quote: (Smith, 2021, p. 45)
- Two authors: (Smith & Jones, 2021)
- Three or more: (Smith et al., 2021)
Word’s built-in citation tool (References | Insert Citation) supports APA style. It’s decent for building a source library, but it has a known weakness: it doesn’t always format edge cases (like multiple authors or no-date sources) perfectly. Always double-check its output.
Reference List
The reference list goes on a new page at the end, titled References (bold, centered). Every source cited in the text must appear here, and vice versa.
The key formatting rule is the hanging indent, the first line of each reference is flush left, and all subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches. In Word: Home | Paragraph | Indentation | Special | Hanging.
If you used Word’s citation manager, References | Bibliography | References will generate this list automatically. Again,review it carefully before submitting.
