APA Style 7th Edition Comprehensive Guide

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering paper elements, heading levels, bias-free language, in-text citations, statistics, abbreviations, and reference formatting rules from the APA 7th Edition guidelines.

Student Title Page

The first page of a student paper providing essential identifying metadata, containing the paper title, author name(s), author affiliation, course number and name, instructor name, assignment due date, and page number 1 in the top right header, with no running head required.

Running Head

An abbreviated paper title of $50$ characters or fewer (counting letters, punctuation, and spaces) printed in all-capital letters, aligned flush left in the header across from the right-aligned page number; required for professional manuscripts but omitted in student papers unless requested.

Title Case

A capitalization style where the first word of the title, the first word of any subtitle, all major words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and words of four letters or more), and both parts of hyphenated major words are capitalized, while conjunctions, prepositions, and articles of three letters or fewer are lowercased.

Sentence Case

A capitalization style where only the first letter of the first word of the title, the first word after punctuation separating a title and subtitle, and proper nouns are capitalized, with all other words lowercased; used for article, book, and webpage titles in reference lists.

Student Author Affiliation

The academic institutional identity of a student author, formatted as the name of the department or division followed by a comma and the name of the college or university attended, without including the city or state unless it is part of the institution's official name.

Permissible APA Style Fonts

Accessible, legible typefaces endorsed in the 7th edition: sans serif fonts including $11\text{-point}$ Calibri, $11\text{-point}$ Arial, and $10\text{-point}$ Lucida Sans Unicode; and serif fonts including $12\text{-point}$ Times New Roman, $11\text{-point}$ Georgia, and normal $10\text{-point}$ Computer Modern.

De Facto Level 1 Heading

The title of the paper repeated at the top of the first page of text (page 2 in student papers), centered and bolded in title case, which serves as the heading for the paper's opening section without using the word 'Introduction'.

Level 1 Heading

A major section heading formatted as centered, bold, and in title case, with the ensuing text beginning on the next line indented as a new paragraph.

Level 2 Heading

A subsection heading directly subordinate to a Level 1 heading, formatted as flush left, bold, and in title case, with the ensuing text beginning on the next line indented as a new paragraph.

Level 3 Heading

A subsection heading subordinate to a Level 2 heading, formatted as flush left, bold italic, and in title case, with the ensuing text beginning on the next line indented as a new paragraph.

Level 4 Heading

A subsection heading subordinate to a Level 3 heading, formatted as indented $0.5\,\text{in.}$, bold, in title case, and ending with a period, with the subsequent paragraph text beginning immediately on the same line.

Level 5 Heading

A subsection heading subordinate to a Level 4 heading, formatted as indented $0.5\,\text{in.}$, bold italic, in title case, and ending with a period, with the subsequent paragraph text beginning immediately on the same line.

Abstract

A brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of a research paper—typically limited to $250$ words—appearing on its own page (page 2) under the bold, centered label 'Abstract', formatted as a single, unindented, double-spaced paragraph.

Keywords

A list of three to five descriptive words, phrases, or acronyms placed one double-spaced line below the abstract, introduced by the indented, italicized label 'Keywords:' and followed by terms in lowercase (except proper nouns) separated by commas without terminal punctuation.

Active Voice

A grammatical voice in which the grammatical subject performs the action of the verb, prioritized in APA Style to produce direct, clear, and concise prose, particularly when describing the actions of human agents.

Passive Voice

A grammatical voice in which the object receiving the action is placed as the grammatical subject followed by a form of 'to be', a past participle, and typically 'by'; acceptable in APA Style when the focus is primarily on the recipient of the action or experimental procedures rather than the actor.

Patchwriting

A form of word plagiarism that occurs when a writer copies text from a source while merely deleting a few words, rearranging phrasing, or substituting direct synonyms without truly reframing the sentence structure and expressing the ideas in their own original words.

Word Plagiarism

The unethical reproduction of another author's exact words or phrases without placing them within quotation marks, even if an in-text author-date citation is provided.

Idea Plagiarism

The unethical presentation of another person's theories, findings, arguments, or data as one's own by omitting an author-date in-text citation.

Person-First Language

A bias-free language convention that emphasizes the person before their condition or disability (e.g., 'person with a disability', 'person with Down syndrome') to avoid defining an individual solely by their diagnosis.

Identity-First Language

A bias-free language convention in which a disability or characteristic is placed first as an integral component of an individual's identity (e.g., 'autistic person', 'Deaf person'), used according to the preferred conventions of specific communities.

Singular 'They'

An APA-endorsed gender-inclusive third-person pronoun used to refer to a generic hypothetical individual whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, or to an individual who uses 'they' as their personal self-identified pronoun.

Author–Date Citation System

The official APA Style citation convention whereby each cited source in the body of the paper is identified by the surname of the author(s) and the year of publication, corresponding to a complete alphabetical entry in the reference list.

Parenthetical Citation

An in-text citation format where both the author surname(s) and the publication year (along with page numbers for quotes) are enclosed in parentheses at the end of a clause or sentence, separated by a comma and using an ampersand for two authors.

Narrative Citation

An in-text citation format where the author surname is incorporated naturally into the grammatical structure of the sentence, followed immediately by the publication year enclosed in parentheses, using the spelled-out word 'and' for two authors.

Et Al.

A Latin abbreviation meaning 'and others' used in in-text citations from the very first mention for any work having three or more authors, following the surname of the first author.

Short Quotation

A verbatim quotation of $39$ words or fewer, enclosed within double quotation marks and integrated directly into the text, accompanied by an in-text citation that includes the author, date, and specific page or location number.

Block Quotation

A verbatim quotation of $40$ words or more, formatted on a new line without quotation marks, indented $0.5\,\text{in.}$ from the left margin, double-spaced, with parenthetical citation details placed immediately after the closing terminal punctuation.

Hanging Indent

A paragraph formatting requirement in APA reference lists where the first line of each citation entry is flush with the left margin and all subsequent lines are indented by $0.5\,\text{in.}$

Four Elements of a Reference

The four foundational building blocks required to assemble an APA reference list entry: Author (Who is responsible?), Date (When was it published?), Title (What is it called?), and Source (Where can it be retrieved?).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

A permanent, unique alphanumeric string assigned to published scholarly content, standardized in APA 7th edition as an active hyperlink starting with the prefix 'https://doi.org/' without a trailing period.

n.d.

A lowercase abbreviation enclosed in parentheses meaning 'no date', substituted into the date element of reference list entries and in-text citations when the publication year cannot be determined.

Advance Online Publication

A notation inserted into the source element of a journal article reference in place of volume, issue, and page numbers when an article has been published online ahead of its formal assignment to a specific volume and issue.

Serial Comma (Oxford Comma)

A comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (such as 'and' or 'or') preceding the final item in a series or list of three or more elements, mandatory in APA Style.

APA Number Rule: Numerals vs. Words

The standard rule requiring numbers zero through nine to be spelled out as words and numbers $10$ and above to be represented as Arabic numerals, with numerals also universally used for units of measurement, times, ages, dates, statistics, and numbered series.

Leading Zero Rule

The decimal reporting principle in APA Style requiring a zero before the decimal point for numbers less than $1$ if the statistic can potentially exceed $1$ (such as means or $F$ values), and omitting the leading zero when the statistic cannot mathematically exceed $1$ (such as correlations, proportions, or $p$ values).

Statistical Symbol Formatting

The typographical standard requiring Roman letters representing statistical symbols or algebraic variables (such as $M$, $SD$, $t$, $F$, and $p$) to be italicized, whereas Greek letters (such as $\alpha$ or $\beta$) are kept in standard non-italic font.

Unit of Measurement Abbreviation Rule

The convention stating that units of measurement are abbreviated without periods (e.g., $80\,\text{m}$, $19\,\text{kg}$) and without plural 's' only when accompanied by a numerical value, except for inches which uses 'in.' to avoid confusion with the preposition.

Time Abbreviation Rule

The guideline allowing hour ('hr'), minute ('min'), second ('s'), and millisecond ('ms') to be abbreviated when paired with a numeral, while larger units of time—days, weeks, months, and years—are never abbreviated.

Latin Abbreviations in APA Style

Shortened Latin terms (including 'e.g.,', 'i.e.,', 'cf.', ', etc.', 'viz.,', and 'vs.') permitted only inside parenthetical text and punctuated as spelled out, whereas narrative text requires their full English equivalents, with the exception of 'et al.' which is permitted in both contexts.

Rule of Three (Abbreviations)

The general APA stylistic recommendation to use an abbreviation only if the term is introduced and appears at least three times throughout the paper, preventing unnecessary abbreviation of terms that do not save substantial space.

Discussion Section

The concluding section of an empirical paper written primarily in the present tense, dedicated to evaluating and interpreting results relative to original hypotheses, articulating study limitations, examining real-world implications, and proposing directions for future research.

Order of Pages

The standard sequence of sections in an APA paper: title page (page 1), abstract (page 2, if included), text/body (beginning page 2 or 3), reference list (on a separate page), footnotes, tables, figures, and appendices.

Twenty-One Authors Reference Rule

The reference list rule stating that works with up to $20$ authors list every author name with an ampersand before the final author, while works with $21$ or more authors list the first $19$ authors, followed by an ellipsis without an ampersand, and conclude with the final author's name.

Official Lexical References in APA Style

The authoritative reference authorities for spelling and hyphenation in APA Style: the Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary for general vocabulary and the APA Dictionary of Psychology for specialized psychological terminology.