Hello, Professor Morgan here showing you how to set up a APA style paper, student paper, as opposed to a professional document. There are two different formatting, and this shows you the student way of doing it. And we're using Google Docs, because why not?
Alright, so there's several different ways you can do this. The first thing I want to do is kind of just set up some of the basic parameters. Now when it comes to the font for APA...
latest one and i'm recording this in december actually just about january of 2024 um anyway so the font actually isn't specific um they have a list of if you go to the apa web page it gives you a list of different fonts you can use um when in doubt go with times new roman 12 okay um that is just kind of the standard it's a very readable font and it's kind of you know you know accepted but it doesn't have to be times new roman 12. But I would just suggest that you use times new Roman 12. Okay. And then I want to make sure that all my, everything in APA formatting is double spaced. So what I want to do is I want to go to format. And I want to go to line and paragraph spacing.
And I want to make sure that is doubled. Okay. So double spaced. All right.
So first thing we're going to do. So these little things right here, this is just stuff that Google Docs puts here. But as soon as I start working on my document, then it's going to go away. The first thing I'm going to do is add in.
the page number. Now unlike previous versions of APA, the only thing that's in there for our student papers is just the number. That's it.
And the number does go on the first page. So what we're going to do is we're going to go to Insert, and we're going to go to Page Number, okay, and we're going to put it in the top right-hand corner, okay. And that's it. That's all we have to do.
Make sure that you don't have this checked, the different first page, because we want it to be fine. That's the way it is. Now to click out of the header, we can just double-click down here below this. Boom, boom, and it goes this way to the header. So now we've set up our page number, and that's as easy as it is.
Next thing we're going to do is we're going to actually start working on the title page. So in APA, there is a title page before we have... we actually start to get to the document itself. We've already set up our spacing to double spacing.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the enter button four times. One, two, three, four. Okay.
And then I'm going to center my text. So how I do that is go do this align and indent and then hit center align. Okay.
And then for the latest edition of APA formatting, the title is in bold. So what? I know. So click on B for bold.
All right. and then you can type in the name of the paper. Now like MLA formatting all the words are capitalized except for very common words.
So if I'm writing this formatting, make this bigger so you can see it, okay formatting a paper in APA So you'll notice that I didn't capitalize A or N, but I capitalized the other ones. Why? I don't know folks, I didn't create this, I'm just showing you how to do it.
Okay, so the title is in bold, alrighty, and then I'm going to turn off my bold because that's just the only title. Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the enter button again, and then once again, and then the next bit of information I need is the name of the person who wrote the paper. So again, this is a student paper, so I'm going to put my name. And they like middle initials if you have one. Include your middle initial.
Okay. The next thing is then I'm just going to hit enter. And this is all centered. Is they want you to put in which department this course is in. So let's call this the Department of, let's call this Psychology.
Okay. And then a comma and the name of the school. We'll call this the. University of University yeah I didn't spell that right okay all right University of University next thing they want you to do is put in the like section of the course number okay so let's say this is psychology this is what it's called psychology 120 then you put a colon space and then you actually put the name of the class so this one would be let's say intro to psychology okay and then you put the name of the instructor please use their title professor doctor whatever so this a this is taught by dr. in the Indiana H Jones bonus points if you can figure out why he's H is the middle name okay and then the date now from what I've seen You can use either the American style of doing a date or the European or worldly style. So the American style would be like March.
Oh, and a key point is this is the due date. This is the due date of the paper, not necessarily when you wrote it, but the due date. So this is the American style, right, where we do March, the month, the day, then the year.
Now, there's other parts of the world where they actually write the date like. 17 March where they actually do it in the actual order of the smallest day to the largest day. If you go from the smallest period of time, okay, a day is smaller than a month, a month is smaller than a year, you don't need a comma. So as far as I can tell, it doesn't really matter either way. Okay, so that's the information that's on the first page.
Okay, now we're ready to start basically writing our paper proper. So here's another cool little trick that you can use. If you go to Insert and you go to Break and you do Page Break, boom, it'll just put you right at the top of the next page.
And look, there's the number two. What? I know.
Okay. So then what you're going to do is that at the top of the next page, you need to put the title again. Now, the easiest way to do this is you just, I just left click on hold and I will highlight the title.
I'm going to right click. Hit copy and then I'm going to come down here where this is. Right click, hit paste. Booyah, life is good. Okay, now we're not done yet because there's a couple other things that you need to be paying attention to.
So we're going to unbold this and we're going to go and change this over to left align. Left align. Okay, now it's super important because if you don't do this step, then it can mess it up when you actually try to convert this file. We need to set up the indentations.
So what we're going to do is we're going to go to format, and we're going to go to align and indent, and then we're going to go over here to indentation options, okay? And we're going to say, what kind of indent do we want? Well, we want the first line of the paragraph to be indented by 0.5.
If you don't do this, it's going to cause a problem. Even if it looks, because if you convert this to a PDF and you don't have this, the PDF won't convert correctly, okay? So that's the thing. So now it's moved over.
So then I can say this is the first line of the first paragraph. Okay, and then I would just go and start typing my A paper here where I have just rocking it like a hurricane. Okay, yeah. Okay, boom.
And then put a period. Okay. And then, when I hit enter, you'll notice that it automatically moves it over.
Dun-dun-dun-dun. Okay, and then I would type in, you know, this is the first line of my second paragraph. And then you would type more information, you know, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Okay. Bloop!
Okay. Fantastic. Okay, so when we look at it, so this is how it looks, okay?
You notice that everything here is double spaced. There's no extra spaces anywhere, okay? Now, basically you're good to go, but I'm going to show you another trick that is very helpful. As a professor, and I've worked at different schools, okay?
Often I'll have students, again, go with what your school tells you. Go with what your instructor tells you, okay? But often I'll have students... share this document with me, okay?
And then I don't have access. Boo! Or sometimes there are certain programs where it's like you have to submit the paper electronically and it has to really be done as like a PDF so that it can be done through a plagiarism checker. To save this file as a PDF, you go to File, and then you go to Download. And you can actually choose which kind of file you want if you want to do it as a Microsoft Word document or whatever.
But I'm going to save it as a PDF document. Okay, and it just it saved it up here, and you can't really see because I've kind of cropped that out Okay, but I want to show you something here Okay So this is what it will look like as a PDF and you notice that it's doing the indenting If you try to convert this file to a PDF and you hadn't in that little didn't then that do that little indenting thing then It won't indent so that's just a weird thing with that You know so that is how you format a paper and APA style using Google Docs all right if you like this video I have other video tutorials on all sorts of different things, so just like and subscribe. Oh, I can't believe that I'm the person that said that, but yeah, do the thing.
All right, thank you so much, and have fun writing.