APA format has clear rules for citing and writing academic papers in the Psychosocial Section:
1. font: Times New Roman is preferred.
2. font size: use small four (12-point) font for paragraph text.
3. Margins: one inch left and right, with a header in the upper left corner with the abbreviated name of the paper; punctuation may be placed internally if the text is too short.
4. page number: in the upper right corner. 5. title and author information: in the upper right corner.
5. title and author information: in the title page lists the title of the article, the author’s name and affiliation and other details, each part of the content should be a separate paragraph.
6. in-text citations: cited at the end of the brackets (such as the author, date), or directly the author as the main body of the cited sentence, immediately followed by the date.
7. bibliography: a separate page, placed after the text. 8.
8. For one author, the format is: author’s name + year; for two or more authors, last name in order of publication, and AND or ET AL for joint citations; for three to five authors, the first citation is labelled with the full name, and only the main author and his/her ET AL format are listed thereafter; for more than six authors, only the first author and the year are listed. All authors must be included in the reference.
9. Multiple documents, the same authors need to be separated by a comma between the year of publication (early years for the first); the same year, more than one need to be noted; multi-author co-authorship needs to be separated by a semicolon, based on the last name of the first, the year of publication after the sorting.
10. Direct quotations are similar in format, e.g., (author, year, number of pages).
APA title writing follows the following hierarchy:
1. centre headings: upper and lower case.
2. secondary headings: italicised upper and lower case. 3. tertiary headings: left italicised upper and lower case.
3. third-level headings: left italics and upper and lower case. 4. fourth-level headings: italics and upper and lower case.
4. Level 4 headings: italicised lower case. 5. Level 5 headings: upper case.
5. fifth-level headings: upper case.
Specific methods of use: the relevant text should be marked as: a title, title II… Level 4 headings, Level 5 headings…. Please note that there are no headings above the sixth level; there is no Introduction section heading; numbers and letters should not appear at the beginning of a paragraph.
