APA title page (cover page)
APA provides different guidelines for student and professional papers. The student version of the APA title page should include the following information (double spaced and centered):
- Paper title
- Author name
- Department and university name
- Course number and name
- Instructor name
- Due date of the assignment
The professional title page also includes an author note (flushed left), but not a course name, instructor name, or due date.
Title page example (student and professional version)
Paper title
Write an informative, striking title that summarizes the topic of your paper. Try to keep the title focused and use relevant keywords.
Place the title three or four lines down from the top of the paper. Center align and bold it. Don’t forget to use title case capitalization (capitalize the first letter of each word, except small words such as articles and short prepositions).
Author
Write the author’s name under the paper title (leave a blank line in between). Give their full names (first name, middle initial(s) and last name), but don’t include titles (Dr., Prof.) or degrees (Ph.D., MSc).
Multiple authors on the title page
List the authors in order of their contribution. If there are two authors, separate their names with the word “and”, like this:
If there are more than two authors, separate their names with a comma. Only write “and” before the last author, like this:
Institutional affiliation
Write the author’s affiliation on the next line under the author names. Students should specify the department and institution where they’re attending school. Professional researchers should specify the department and institution where they conducted their research.
Multiple authors with different affiliations
Use superscript numbers on the author line to indicate which institution they’re affiliated with. Don’t use superscript numbers if all authors are affiliated with the same institution (and department).
1 Department of Psychology, Harvard University
2 Department of Economics, Princeton University
3 Department of Mathematics, Stanford University
Course information
On a student title page, provide information about the course. List the following information on separate (double spaced) lines under the author’s affiliation:
- Course number and name
- Instructor(s)
- Assignment’s due date
Author note
For professional papers, you may include an author note. This note may contain the author’s ORCHID ids, affiliation changes, disclosures of conflicts of interest, brief acknowledgments, and contact information (in that specific order). Present this information in separate paragraphs.
Place the author note on the bottom half of the page. Center the label “Author note” and apply bold styling. The paragraphs in the author note are left-aligned. The first line of each new paragraph is indented.
For more information about formatting the author note, see section 2.7 of the APA Publication Manual.
Page header
For a student title page, the page header consists of just a page number in the top-right corner. There is no need for a running head (as was the case in APA 6th edition).
A professional title page does have a running head. The running head is an abbreviated version of the paper title in all capital letters. The maximum length is 50 characters (counting spaces).
2 comments
M Saiham Hossain
October 28, 2020 at 12:51 PMHello!
Thank you for writing. This is by far the best guideline I have found.
I have one small confusion on whether a question can be the title/running head of a paper? Or does the title/running head needs to be a statement?
Thank you!
Shona McCombes (Scribbr-team)
October 30, 2020 at 9:25 PMHi,
Glad to hear that you found this article helpful!
The title should describe your paper's content as accurately and concisely as possible. There's no specific rule against making your title a question, as long as it very clearly communicates what the paper is about.