For Students

APA Style for Occidental Psychology Majors

The American Psychological Association (APA) provides a set of guidelines for writing and formatting academic papers. This APA style benefits both writers and readers by standardizing and simplifying the way in which information is discussed in texts, particularly research journals.

Within courses, psychology majors are taught the basics of APA style's many rules and are required to follow central guidelines in most of their writing. APA style dictates general aspects of writing (e.g., tone, primary use of 3rd person perspective, order of paper subsections) and very specific formatting rules (e.g., italicizing a book's title or a journal's title and volume number). In particular, Oxy students must use proper format for:

  • the title page ("manuscript" format)
  • citations within the text:
    direct quotations, use of "and" versus "&", alphabetical ordering for multiple citations together, use of "et al."
  • citations within the "Reference" page:
    indenting, spacing, format for different types of sources
  • reporting statistical results
  • sections and headings of an empirical paper (e.g., Methods, Results, etc.)

We provide links below to free Internet resources and to a sample paper. Students can also see examples of APA style just by looking at an article in an APA journal. Because we cannot guarantee that online resources are up-to-date, however, students should always refer to an official publication when uncertain.

Print Resources
Official APA publications explaining APA style are commercially available through bookstores, online vendors, and the APA website (www.apa.org):

  • Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th Edition)
  • Mastering APA Style: Student's Workbook and Training Guide
  • Concise Rules of APA Style
Internet Resources

APA Style.org
The OWL at Purdue
Plonsky’s “Psychology With Style”
Capital Community College
APA Sample Paper - Clarification note: The "running head" is an abbreviated title, shortened to 50 characters or less (all capitalized). By contrast, the header (at the top right of every page is comprised of the first 2-3 words of the title).