Common APA 7 formatting mistakes in student papers

Formatting marks are the cheapest marks in a paper: no new idea, no extra reading, only the rule and ten minutes. Formatting is also the first thing a marker sees.

Most APA formatting mistakes have one of two causes. The writer, or the template, learned the 6th edition. Or the word processor's defaults were left as they were. Both leave traces a checker can find, and EdCitation's Mechanics QA, part of Pro, reads a file against the APA 7 student paper to show where it strays.

Every rule below was checked against the paper format pages of the APA Style website in September 2026, and against the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2020), which those pages summarise. Where a rule has an exception, the exception is given, because that is usually where the marks go. If your department asks for something different, that instruction wins.

What goes on an APA 7 student title page?

A student title page has seven elements, in a fixed order: title, author, affiliation, course number and name, instructor, due date and page number.

The seven elements, in order

1. Title. Three or four lines down from the top, centred, in bold, with the major words capitalised. APA sets no maximum length, so a long title is not an error. A subtitle may go on its own double-spaced line.
2. Author. One double-spaced blank line below the title, centred. Two authors take "and"; three or more take commas and an "and" before the last.
3. Affiliation. The department and the institution, separated by a comma. For a student paper this is where you study, not where any research was done.
4. Course. The course number as printed on your course materials, a colon, then the course name.
5. Instructor. The name as it appears on course materials.
6. Due date. The date format normal in your country, so 18 October 2026 is as acceptable as October 18, 2026.
7. Page number. The title page is page 1, top right.

The hard cases

The usual slips are a title that is not bold, a missing course or instructor line, and an author note or abstract nobody asked for: student papers have no author note, and APA says they rarely need an abstract. If your instructor asks for the professional title page instead, the affiliation becomes where the research was done and an author note and running head are added.

Do student papers need a running head?

No. In APA 7 a student paper has no running head unless the instructor or institution asks for one. Its header holds the page number and nothing else.

A running head is the clearest sign of an old template. The 6th edition required one on every paper, with the label "Running head:" on the first page. In the 7th edition only professional papers carry one, and the label is gone.

If you are asked for one, it is a short form of the title in capital letters, no more than 50 characters including spaces and punctuation, at the left margin of the header, the same on every page. An ampersand may replace "and" to save characters. Page numbers go top right on every page, reference list included.

Which fonts, spacing and margins does APA 7 accept?

APA 7 accepts a range of fonts, not only Times New Roman, and it accepts your word processor's default if that default is one of them:

• Sans serif: 12-point Aptos, 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode.
• Serif: 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal 10-point Computer Modern, which is the LaTeX default.

Use the same font throughout, with three exceptions APA names: text inside a figure image (sans serif, 8 to 14 points), computer code (a monospace font such as 10-point Courier New), and footnotes inserted with the footnote function, which keep their default settings.

Spacing, and where it does not apply

Double-space everything: the title page, the text, block quotations, headings, table and figure numbers and titles, and the reference list, within each entry as well as between entries. Do not add extra space before or after paragraphs, which Word adds by default and which is the commonest spacing error of all.

The exceptions are worth knowing. Table cells and words inside a figure image may be single-spaced, one-and-a-half-spaced or double-spaced, whichever is clearest, and footnotes keep their default settings.

Margins and indentation

Margins are one inch, or 2.54 cm, on every side. The exception is a dissertation or thesis, where APA says your institution may set different margins, often a wider left one for binding.

Align the text left and leave the right edge ragged. Do not justify, and do not hyphenate by hand. Indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5 in., or 1.27 cm, with the tab key or the paragraph settings, never the space bar. Four things escape that indent: section labels are centred, an abstract's first line is flush left, a block quotation is indented as a whole, and reference entries take a hanging indent.

How are the five APA heading levels formatted?

APA 7 has five levels of heading, all bold and all in title case. They differ in position, in italics, and in whether the text starts on a new line. The wording below is APA's own, so it keeps APA's spelling; the "period" at the end of Levels 4 and 5 is a full stop.

Use the levels in order, not by how important a section feels: one level of heading means Level 1, two means Levels 1 and 2, and so on. A short paper may need none.

Four of the five mistakes below are named on APA's own headings page, and the fifth comes from old templates.

• A heading that says "Introduction". APA states that the opening paragraphs are understood to be introductory, and that the paper title acts as a Level 1 heading. Headings within the introduction are allowed, starting at Level 2.
• Numbered or lettered headings, such as "2.1 Method". APA does not use them, although some departments and most engineering styles do. Follow the brief where it asks for them.
• One subsection on its own. A section has no subsections, or at least two, as in an outline.
• Extra blank lines above or below a heading, or single spacing inside one, even at the foot of a page.
• The 6th edition's formats. Levels 3, 4 and 5 all changed in the 7th edition, so an old template gets them wrong.

Use the Styles menu rather than bolding text by hand. It keeps headings consistent, and APA points out that it also codes them properly for screen readers. For Levels 4 and 5, type the heading and the first few words of text, then highlight only the heading and apply the style.

How should the APA reference list be set out?

The reference list starts on a new page after the text, under the label "References", centred and in bold. It is not called "Bibliography", "Works Cited" or "Reference List". What those names mean in other styles is set out in Reference list, bibliography or works cited.

• Hanging indent. The first line of each entry sits at the left margin and every later line is indented by 0.5 in. Set this in the paragraph settings, not with tabs or spaces, or the indents will move when the text reflows.
• Order. Alphabetical by the first word of each entry, usually the first author's surname. An entry with no author is placed by its title.
• Spacing. Double-spaced, with no extra blank line between entries.
• Pairs. Every work cited in the text appears in the list, and every entry in the list is cited in the text. Upload the paper to EdCitation's Verify references, free, and the pairing is checked in both directions.

The exceptions most people miss

If the list holds only one entry, APA's reference list page says the label may be the singular "Reference". Personal communications, which a reader cannot retrieve, are cited in the text only and never appear in the list, and so is a general mention of a whole website. In the other direction, the references gathered for a meta-analysis need not be cited in the text. And an article numbered rather than paginated takes the word "Article" and its number where the pages would go: Scientific Reports, 13, Article 14045, or APA's own example, PLOS ONE, 13(3), Article e0193972. EdCitation's Cite a source prints both that way, though the record files the e-number as a page.

Accuracy matters most here, and it has been measured. Across the 105 journal studies Logan et al. (2024) reviewed, the overall error rate was 32.7%, and author names went wrong most often. A list can be formatted perfectly and still be wrong. The rules for the text side are in APA 7 in-text citations, and Verify references checks each entry against the publisher's record.

How should DOIs and URLs look in APA 7?

A DOI is written as a link, in the form https://doi.org/ followed by the number, even when the article prints an older form such as "doi:". APA asks you to standardise every entry.

• Include the DOI for every work that has one, online or in print. What is a DOI explains where to find it. If a work has both a DOI and a URL, give only the DOI; if a print work has no DOI, give neither.
• Do not write "Retrieved from" or "Accessed from". "Retrieved" survives only for the few pages that need a retrieval date because their content is designed to change.
• Do not put a full stop after a DOI or a URL, because it can break the link.
• An article from an ordinary academic database needs no database name or URL. The exception is a database publishing its own proprietary material, or holding works of limited circulation, where the name and URL do belong.
• ISBNs and ISSNs never appear in an APA reference. Links may be blue and underlined, or plain text.

Copy and paste DOIs rather than retyping them: APA's DOI page gives the same advice, and transcription is where errors enter.

Which mistakes come straight from the 6th edition?

These six travel together: a paper with one of them usually has several.

How often each turns up is harder to say than it looks. Scheinfeld et al. (2025) gathered 32 studies, published between 2006 and 2024, on how accurately APA references are formatted, and found errors counted in 64 different ways, which is why no single figure for "the most common APA error" is quoted here.

What gets left in the file by accident?

Comments and tracked changes. This is not an APA rule, because it is about the file rather than the format, but it is the most visible slip of all: a friend's margin comment greets the marker as the file opens.

Before you submit a Word file, accept or reject every tracked change, delete every comment, and turn tracking off. Mechanics QA lists any comments or tracked changes left behind. Then look for leftover template text, stray highlighting and a blank final page. If the course accepts PDF, export one and read it through.

One file-level check belongs here too. References suggested by a chatbot can be formatted perfectly and still not exist. Of the 636 ChatGPT references Walters and Wilder (2023) examined, 55% of those from GPT-3.5 were fabricated, and 18% of those from GPT-4. Correct formatting is not evidence of a real source; a lookup is. Verify references returns each entry as verified, doubtful ("check this") or not found, free with no account.

Can a tool check APA formatting for me?

The mechanical part, yes, and EdCitation is the best tool for it, because it checks your file against the rules and looks references up in the publisher's record instead of writing anything. The second half matters as much as the first. With nearly a third of journal references carrying an error in Logan et al.'s review, and most GPT-3.5 references invented outright, a list that merely looks right proves nothing.

Mechanics QA also checks numbers and language. It reports and never rewrites, and nothing in EdCitation writes any part of a paper. Cite a source sets a title deposited in title case in sentence case, as APA 7 asks, and keeps names and initialisms; glance at any name made of ordinary words. Max ($24 a month, see pricing) brings in Theoretics QA and the Library as well. No checker can promise a mark.

Quick questions

Does an APA 7 student paper need an abstract?

Generally not. APA says student papers do not usually include an abstract unless the instructor or the institution asks for one. A requested abstract goes on its own page after the title page, under the bold, centred label "Abstract", first line flush left.

Is Times New Roman required in APA 7?

No. APA 7 accepts several fonts, among them 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial and 12-point Aptos. Use one font throughout, apart from figures, computer code and footnotes.

Is the word References bold in APA 7?

Yes. In APA 7 the label "References" is centred and in bold at the top of a new page, like other section labels such as "Abstract". In the 6th edition it was not bold, which is why older templates get it wrong. If the list holds a single entry, the singular label "Reference" is allowed.

How do I make a hanging indent for APA references?

Select the reference list, open the paragraph settings, and choose a hanging indent of 0.5 in., or 1.27 cm. In Word the option is under Indentation, Special, as Microsoft's own support page sets out. Never build one with tabs or spaces.

What if my department's rules differ from APA?

Follow your department. APA's pages repeatedly defer to the instructor or the institution, and thesis margins are the clearest example: a binding margin replaces the one-inch rule. Write the departmental rule at the top of your checklist, or let EdCitation's free Check your paper draw that checklist from the assignment's instructions.

References

• American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Paper format. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format
• American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
• Logan, S. W., Hussong-Christian, U., Case, L., & Noregaard, S. (2024). Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 56(4), 896–949. https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006231177715
• Microsoft. (n.d.). Create a hanging indent in Word. Microsoft Support. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/create-a-hanging-indent-in-word
• Scheinfeld, L., Chung, S., Fena, C., Tran, C., Kretz, C., & Reisman, M. R. (2025). Assessing formatting accuracy of APA Style references: A scoping review. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 20(4), 159–191. https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip30800
• Walters, W. H., & Wilder, E. I. (2023). Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 14045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41032-5