APA Formatting and Style LibGuide: Home

Donnelly College Library has several copies of Publication Manual for APA.  They are located in Reference and Course Reserves. The books are available to use in the library.  

Why is APA Style so important?

Abiding by APA's standards as a writer will allow you to: provide readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more efficiently and to locate information of interest to them. allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with unfamiliar formatting.

APA Formatting and Style Guide is one of two writing style guides frequently used at Donnelly College. If you are in Business or Nursing programs, you will more than likely use APA style for your student papers. 

This LibGuides provides the following:

• The basics of APA,
• APA resources at Donnelly College Library,
• Links to useful online APA resources,
• APA Templates and guides on how to format your student papers and
• How to use APA in-text citations within your student paper. 

The Basics of APA Style

This guide is intended as a basic overview for APA Formatting and Style. It is designed to help students become familiar with the ins & outs of APA and explains how to implement the style for class papers. It also provides a step-by-step, illustrated instruction for setting up formatting options in Microsoft Word to meet the requirements of APA.

• Your essay should be typed and double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11"), with 1" margins on all sides.  
• Student paper, should include the page number at the top of the page. 
•  Recommended fonts: These include sans serif fonts such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, and 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode as well as serif fonts such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, 10-point Computer Modern.  Your professor should their font preferences in their class paper assignments.  If they do not consult your instructor.
• The title page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, course number and name, instructor name, and assignment due date.

Student checklist, APA Templates and other online links are available in the APA Template and Guides Tab.

If you need more help please consult your instructor or the librarian.