Speaker 1: Hi everyone, welcome to The Smart Student. My name is Chelsea Seaburn. Today I'm going to cut right to the chase because we have a lot of ground to cover. This is a tutorial on how to format your paper in the 7th edition in APA style. These are the most recent APA guidelines released in October 2019. Under the 7th edition there are two specific guidelines for setting up your papers, one for professionals and the other for students. This is a tutorial for students. Now that includes high school students, college students, up to graduate students. As long as your paper is not for publish, then you would follow the APA guidelines for students. If you're only looking for a specific part of APA formatting, please refer to the video description below where I added in the video content so you could skip ahead to the part that you need. But with no further ado, let's go ahead and jump into today's lesson. Quick disclaimer, if your professor gives you any specific instructions that differ from this video, please follow those first and foremost because one, they're allowed to deviate from the APA standards and two, they're the ones that are going to be great to you. All right, let's get started. The first thing you want to do is pull up your blank document where you'll be writing your paper in a software such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. I'll be using Microsoft Word for this demonstration. The next thing you'll want to do is ensure that your page margins are set up correctly. APA requires a one-inch margin on all sides of your page. This is actually the default setting in both Microsoft Word and Google Docs, but if you want to check your margins, you'd simply go to layout, margins, where you would see that the normal tab is checked, which ensures one-inch margins around the top, bottom, left, and right-hand side of the page. To go back, click the home tab where we will move on to the next step. The next thing you'll want to do is set the font for your document. APA 7th edition does not specify a predetermined font so long as the font is legible and consistent throughout the entire document. I personally like to use Times New Roman size 12. After you set your font, you will format your paper in double spacing. You do this by selecting the line spacing option from the toolbar and then selecting the option number two. After you double space your text, you will want to go back into the line spacing tab and select more options. From here, you'll want to check the box don't add space between paragraphs of the same style. If you don't check this box, both Microsoft and Google Docs has a default setting that will automatically add an additional space when you hit enter and begin a new paragraph. That extra line goes against the APA standards for double spacing. All right, now that the basic formatting is set, the next thing you'll want to do is create the title page. You'll start by hitting enter four times. One, two, three, four. You'll then center your text and type out your title in boldface font. The shortcut for typing in bold is command B on a Mac or control B on a PC or you can come up to the toolbar and select the B. You'll want to type your title in title case standards meaning that all words should be capitalized except for those smaller words also known as prepositions such as and, a, as, the. If the preposition is beginning the title like you see here, then it would be capitalized in that scenario. Do not abbreviate any words in your title and if your title is long or has a subtitle, you can continue your title underneath on a second line. A good title should be a concise description of what your paper is about and should not exceed more than 50 characters. After you type your title, you'll hit enter twice leaving a gap line between your title and the next line. Here you will unbold your text by again either hitting command B or hitting B in the toolbar. You will then type your name on this line. If you were working with a co-author, you would separate your names with an and like so. If you were working with multiple authors, you would separate them with a comma and separate the last two with an and as well. It would look like this. But for the sake of this example, we'll say that we only have one author. From here you would hit enter and type your affiliation. Your affiliation line should include your department or division first followed by a comma and then the university you are affiliated with. From here you will hit enter again and enter in your course information. This line should be typed as your course number or code followed by its name. You'll want the course code and name to match the way your university has it listed. If you'll notice, the course code and course name is separated by a colon. Again you will hit enter where you will type out your professor's name. You'll want to double check your course materials for the correct spelling of your professor's name before doing so. You will hit enter once more and then type out the due date of your assignment. The last element you'll want to add on your title page is the page number. I would like to note here that the updated 7th edition version of APA no longer requires student papers to have a running head. A page number in the upper right hand corner is all you need. The easiest way to add a page number is to double click in the header ribbon. From here you'll want to select the page number drop down menu, select page number, and ensure that the alignment is on the right hand side of your document. Once it is, you'll select okay and you'll see the number one pop up in the right hand side. Once you're finished, double click anywhere outside of the header and just like that your title page is finished. From here go ahead and hit enter until you make it to the next full blank page. I would also like to note that the APA 7th edition no longer requires an abstract for student papers either. You would only include an abstract if your instructor specifically asks you to do so. Since you do not need an abstract, the main body of your text will begin on the second page in your document. You will start by repeating your title on the first line of your main body. You can do this by simply copy and pasting your title from your title page to your body page. This signifies that you are starting the introduction portion of your paper. Once your title is pasted on the first line, you'll align your text flush left to start your first paragraph. As a reminder, each paragraph in your body should be indented. You indent by hitting the tab key on your keyboard. As previously mentioned, your entire document should be double spaced which means you'll want to avoid adding in any additional spacing throughout your text. The next thing I'm going to discuss are section headings. Headings are important when you're writing large papers because they help organize your content and they help the reader identify the context in each section of your paper. Headings should be descriptive and concise and the number of headings used will be determined by the length and complexity of your paper. Under APA 7th edition, there are five different levels of headings. Level 1 is the highest or main level of headings with level 2 being the subheading of level 1. Level 3 would then be the subheading for level 2 with level 4 and 5 proceeding after. Here's how this would look in an example. As you can see here, level 1 is bolded and centered in the middle of the text. Level 2 proceeds under level 1 isn't aligned on the left hand side of the paper. Level 3 proceeds under level 2 and is also left aligned but it is italicized. Level 4 and 5 follow the same formatting as 2 and 3 except in that they are indented and it is not necessary to add in blank lines before or after headings even if a heading falls at the end of the page. While there are five different levels of headings, they are only to be used to differentiate distinct sections of your paper. Generally, students do not need to go past level 1 or level 2 at most and if it's a short paper, headings may not be necessary altogether. Before moving on, I would like to note a few things here. A level 1 heading is not needed for the introduction of your paper because the title of your paper signifies the introduction. If you need to use a heading in the first section of your paper, it would proceed as a level 2 underneath the title of your paper. All headings should follow the same double space formatting as the rest of your paper, meaning that you shouldn't add blank lines in between them. Lastly, headings should not be labeled with numbers or letters. From here, we will move on to the final section in your paper and this is your reference list. The reference list should start on the next full page after the last page of your main body. The first thing you'll want to do is type references in boldface at the top and in the center of your page like you see it's done here. From there, you will hit enter and align your text flush left. Your references should be listed in alphabetical order in a hanging indent format. A hanging indent, also known as a second line indent, sets off the first line of a paragraph by positioning it at the margin and then indenting each subsequent line of the paragraph. Here is an example of what the hanging dent reference page should look like. Please note that if you have a reference that begins with a number, it should be listed first with the letters proceeding in alphabetical order. After your reference list is completed, you should now have the three main sections of 7th edition APA formatting. You would have your title page, the main body of your paper utilizing headings and subheadings when necessary, followed by the reference page. The remainder of this video will now discuss some basic grammar guidelines for APA. Number one, a space should be used at the end of each sentence. This is very simple. After each punctuation mark, you simply hit the space bar before beginning the next sentence. Number two, the Oxford comma should be used throughout your paper when listing out three or more items. For example, if I were to type out the following sentence, California is beautiful, sunny, and warm, the Oxford comma would be the last comma separating this list. Number three, use words to write out any number smaller than 10, and if the number is starting out the sentence. Otherwise, you'll want to use numerals. For example, you will type the following sentences as such. Common fractions should be written out as well like this. And lastly, you should always use numerals for numbers that represent time, dates, ages, and money. These are a few examples of the most used grammar guidelines to follow when writing an APA 7th edition. For more information, I've included links in the description below to the official handbook. All right, that concludes today's lesson. If you're still here right now, I hope that's because you found this video useful. If you did find this video useful, be sure to give it a big thumbs up, share it with your friends, and of course, subscribe for more videos like this every week. Thank you.