- Headings: General overview
- The number of headings per paper varies depending on many reasons, such as subject matter
- The introduction of a paper does not receive a heading – APA assumes that once the paper begins, it is automatically the introduction
- There is a large difference between formatting headings within the body of the paper and section titles
- Headings within the body of the paper include the Methods, Results, and Discussion sections – These headings are bold faced.
- Section titles include the Abstract, author note, title of paper (where it appears above the actual beginning of the paper), references, appendix/appendices, and footnotes. Section titles have no additional format.
- Formatting Headings
- APA style has a unique, and very important to follow, way of formatting the different headings in a paper
- There are five heading levels
- The different level headings represent sections, sub-sections, and sub-sections of sub-sections in a paper
- Regardless of the number of levels in a paper, always use the headings in numerical order
- Begin with level 1, then level 2, and so on
- Section headings = Level 1 format
- Subsections = Level 2 format
- Subsections of subsections = Level 3 format
- It is not necessary to indicate the level number with your heading; the information here is only how to format the title of the section/subsection
- Below is a table that explains the formatting per level of heading:
APA Headings Levels |
|
Level |
Format |
1 |
Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Headings |
2 |
Left-aligned, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading |
3 |
Indented, boldface, lowercase heading with a period. Begin text directly after period, not on the next line. |
4 |
Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin text directly after period, not on the next line. |
5 |
Indented, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin text directly after period, not on the next line. |
An example of utilizing these headings in an actual paper goes as follows:
Method (Level 1)
Setting of Experiment (Level 2)
Participant Demographics (Level 2)
Male. (Level 3)
Female. (Level 3)
(All information derived from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ and http://www.apastyle.org/index.aspx)