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1. APA 6th Edition Formatting of Headers: Level 1-5
Basic Formatting
Chapter/Section Location
Level 1 Header
Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading
The text begins after the Level-1 Header, it is left aligned and indented like a regular paragraph, ½”
Chapter 3: Section 3.03 – Levels of Heading (pp. 63 - 64)
Chapter 2: Figure 2.1 – Sample Papers (p. 44)
Level 2 Header
Flush Left, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading
The text begins after the Level-1 Header, it is left aligned and indented like a regular paragraph, ½”
Chapter 3: Section 3.03 – Levels of Heading (pp. 63 - 64)
Chapter 2: Figure 2.1 – Sample Papers (p. 44)
Level 3 Header
Indented, boldface, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.The text begins one space after the header and on the same line.
NOTE: The indentation for the header is equal to the paragraph indentation of ½”.
Chapter 3: Section 3.03 – Levels of Heading (pp. 63 - 64)
Chapter 2: Figure 2.1 – Sample Papers (p. 45)
Level 4 Header
Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period. The text begins one space after the header and on the same line.
NOTE: The indentation for the header is equal to the paragraph indentation of ½”.
Chapter 3: Section 3.03 – Levels of Heading (pp. 63 - 64)
Chapter 2: Figure 2.3 – Sample Papers (p. 58)
Level 5 Header
Indented, italicized, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period. The text begins one space after the header and on the same line.
NOTE: The indentation for the header is equal to the paragraph
Chapter 3: Section 3.03 – Levels of Heading (pp. 63 - 64)
Academic Bytes™ ©Michelle Post, Ph.D., CSMS 11/01/2014

2. indentation of ½”.
NOTE: Header Order
“Proceed through the levels numerically, starting with Level 1, without skipping over levels (this is in contrast to the 5th edition heading style, which involved skipping levels depending on the total number of levels you had—how complicated!).” (Lee, 2009, para. 3)
References: Lee, C. (2009, July 9). Five essential tips for APA style headings [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/07/five-essential-tips-for-apa-style-headings.html
NOTE: Title Case
“Here are directions for implementing APA’s title case:
1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;
2. Capitalize all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self- report); and
3. Capitalize all words of four letters or more.
This boils down to using lowercase only for “minor” words of three letters or fewer, namely, for conjunctions (words like and, or, nor, and but), articles (the words a, an, and the), and prepositions (words like as, at, by, for, in, of, on, per, and to), as long as they aren’t the first word in a title or subtitle.” (Lee, 2012, para. 3)
References: Lee, C. (2012, March 9). Title case and sentence case capitalization in APA style [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/03/title-case-and-sentence-case- capitalization-in-apa-style.html
NOTE: No Level-1 Header for Introduction
The text of the paper begins on Page-3 (Title Page = Page-1 and Abstract Page = Page-2) with the same title that is located on the title page. There is no “Introduction.” The first paragraphs of the manuscript are the assumed introduction. (APA, 2010, p. 63)
Resource from the APA Style Blog:
How to Use Five Levels of Heading in an APA Style Paper - http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/04/how-to-use-five-levels-of-heading-in-an-apa-style-paper.html
Title Case and Sentence Case Capitalization in APA Style - http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/03/title-case-and-sentence-case-capitalization-in-apa-style.html
Academic Bytes™ ©Michelle Post, Ph.D., CSMS 11/01/2014