APA Style Checklist

A Checklist to help you Follow APA Style in your Literature Review

•   Title page (see Publication manual, pp. 10-12)

  • Do you have a header and page number (both on the same line)?

  • Do you have a running head, flush left, with all letters of the running head itself in caps?

  • Are your title, name and university affiliation centered?

  • Is the first letter of each major word of your title capitalized?

•   Body of your paper

  • Do you leave between 1 and 11/2" margins on the left, right, top and bottom?

  • Do you have a header and page number (both on the same line, flush right) on each page?

  • Is your title centered on the first page of the body of your paper?

  • Is the first letter of each major word of your title capitalized?

  • Do you doublespace (and only doublespace) throughout? Only the title, first page of the body of your paper and your reference page should automatically start a new page.

  • Do you use plain text (avoiding italics and bold) throughout?

  • Do you cite each idea taken from an author? (Pavlov, 1998)

  • Do you know how to cite multiple authored articles (Wolpe, Skinner, & Pavlov, 1999) and how this changes from the first to the second citation (Wolpe et al., 1999)?

  • If you use a quote, do you use the appropriate quotation style for short quotes (less than 40 words) and long quotes (40 or more words)?

  • Do you include the page number for your quoted material (Marlatt, 1997, p. 23)? The page number is unnecessary for material that isn't directly quoted.

  • If you refer to something cited in another source you read, do you cite the reference? (Skinner, 1988, as cited in Watson, 1998)

  • Do you briefly outline the thesis of your paper and why it is important in your first paragraph?

  • Do you integrate the articles you read into your discussion of your paper rather than discussing them sequentially?

  • Do you include and discuss both the evidence supporting your thesis and that contradicting it?

  • Do you pull your ideas together at the end in your closing paragraph?

•   References (see Publication manual, pp. 215-281)

  • Do you have a header and page number (both on the same line)?

  • Do you center the word References at the top of your list? (Only the first letter is capitalized.)

  • Do you include at least five professional references?

  • Are your references doublespaced?

  • Is each citation in your paper included in your reference list? (I check.)

  • Is each reference on your reference list cited in your paper? (I check.)

  • Material that you read about in a secondary source, i.e., (Skinner, 1988, as cited in Tharp, 2002), should not be in the reference list. Tharp (1999) would be included, Skinner (1988) would not.

  • Is each reference indented in the second and subsequent lines?

  • Do you use APA reference style consistently and compulsively?