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?

Page by jms
URL=http://psy1.clarion.edu/jms/paperchecklist.html

Last modified December 4, 2003