All You Need To Know About Research Paper Format Of A Title Page In APA

A famous saying goes, You can’t judge a book by its cover, albeit de facto it is quite the contrary. When it comes to a research paper, the title page is the first thing you see, so any sloppy mistake, either in spelling or format, will be quite obvious and might create a bad impression of the paper as a whole.

Depending on what style your department follows, there are different standards that can guide you in writing the report.

APA Title Page Elements

• The title of the paper.

This is the most significant part, and it should be aligned to the center and about halfway down the page. It should include the full title of the research paper in upper and lowercase letters not exceeding 12 words (one or two lines) in length. No bold, italics, underlining, or quotation marks are acceptable.

• The author’s name with personal details.

Your name (first name, middle initial(s), and last name with no titles or degrees to mention), institution (the location where the author(s) carried out the study) and the date of submission should be at the bottom of the page. Given that this part of the title page is quite flexible, its structure might vary from institution to institution, and very often it includes the name of the supervisor.

• The running head.

This is a condensed version of the title not exceeding 50 characters in length including punctuation, letters, and spaces (see the format below):

Running head:

TITLE OF YOUR PAPER

In addition, the running head is the header appearing at the top of each page aligned to the left (see the format below):

TITLE OF YOUR PAPER

• The page number.

With the help of the header function in Microsoft Word, the running header is separated from the page number by 5 or 7 spaces and appears on every page throughout the document starting with the title page. The page number must be right aligned.

General APA Guidelines

According to the APA style, all text on the title page, as well as throughout the whole paper, is recommended to be double-spaced using 12 pt. Times New Roman font on a standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11") with a 1" margins on all sides.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, simply follow the afore described straightforward instructions to create an excellent title page that can represent and conform to the hard work invested in your research paper.