APA 7th Edition Formatting for Theses and Dissertations

By the Mastermind PhD team · Last updated: 3 November 2026 · Editorial policy

Your handbook says “format the thesis in APA 7th edition”, but the Publication Manual was written for journal manuscripts and course papers, not for a 150-page document with chapters, a table of contents and a binding margin. Which parts of APA apply, and which does the university replace? More than most students expect on both counts.

This article is part of our guide How to Write a Master’s Thesis by the Mastermind PhD team and relates to our Thesis & Research Formatting service. Sources last checked: November 2026.

APA 7 fixes the title page, the page header, fonts, spacing, five heading levels, the presentation of numbers, tables and figures, and the author-date citation system with its reference list. It also says plainly that theses and dissertations follow the requirements of the institution. This guide to APA 7 thesis formatting sets out what the manual specifies, how to implement it in Word, and the points where university rules usually take over.

Student paper or professional paper: which applies to a thesis?

APA 7 introduced two versions of the paper format. The student version serves course assignments: its title page carries the title, the author, the department and university, the course number and name, the instructor and the due date, with a page number in the header and no running head unless the instructor asks for one.

The professional version serves manuscripts for publication: title, authors, affiliations, an author note, an abstract with keywords, and a running head on every page.

A thesis is neither. Universities supply their own title page template, require an abstract and a table of contents, and most do not require a running head, so the practical answer is: student-style simplicity in the header, professional completeness in the content, and the university template for the title page.

What are the page setup rules?

Page setup is where APA 7 thesis formatting starts. APA 7 accepts several fonts as long as one is used throughout: Calibri 11, Arial 11, Lucida Sans Unicode 10, Times New Roman 12, Georgia 11 and Computer Modern 10 are the examples the manual lists.

Margins are 1 inch (2.54 cm) on all sides. The entire paper is double-spaced, including the title page, the abstract, block quotations, headings, the reference list and table and figure notes, with no extra lines between paragraphs; the body of a table and the image of a figure may be single-spaced or 1.5-spaced, and footnotes may use the word processor’s default single spacing.

Paragraphs begin with a 0.5-inch first-line indent, text is left-aligned with a ragged right edge, words are not hyphenated at line ends, and one space follows a period. The page number sits in the top right of every page, beginning with the title page.

Two of these rules are the ones universities most often replace: binding editions need a wider inner margin, and most thesis regulations in Europe prescribe 1.5 rather than double spacing.

📱 Get your formatting checked before submission — Send your faculty’s style guide with the file; we apply it to the front matter, tables, margins and references.

How does the running head work?

In a professional paper the running head is an abbreviated title of no more than 50 characters, including spaces and punctuation, written in capital letters and placed flush left in the page header on every page, including the title page, with the page number flush right. APA 7 removed the label “Running head:” that the 6th edition required on the first page. Student papers carry only the page number. For a thesis, follow the handbook: most want the page number alone, a few want the chapter title in the header, and Manchester’s policy forbids the candidate’s name in any header.

How do the five heading levels work?

APA adds three rules: the introduction of a paper has no heading because its position identifies it; a level is used only if it will contain at least two subsections; and headings are not numbered.

In a thesis the chapter title normally sits above Level 1, either as a university-specified chapter heading style (“Chapter 4” and the title on a new page) or by treating chapter titles as Level 1 and sections as Level 2. Many handbooks require numbered headings (4.1, 4.2), which APA does not; apply the numbering through a multilevel list linked to the heading styles so the numbers update themselves. In Word, map Levels 1 to 5 to Heading 1 to Heading 5 and modify the style definitions.

How do you format tables and figures in APA 7?

The table number appears in bold above the table (Table 4), the title in italic title case on the next line, column headings for every column, horizontal rules only (above the headings, below them and at the foot of the table), and notes below beginning with Note. in italics. Figures follow the same pattern: bold number, italic title beneath it, the image, an optional legend inside the image area, and notes below. Tables and figures are placed in the text after their first mention or, in manuscripts, after the reference list; theses embed them.

For the List of Tables to work in Word, create the caption with Insert Caption, press Shift+Enter after the number to start the title on a new line within the same caption paragraph, and apply bold to the number and italic to the title; the list then shows the full caption.

How do you set up citations and the reference list?

In-text citations give the author and year: a parenthetical form (Field, 2018) and a narrative form, Field (2018). Two authors are joined with an ampersand in parentheses (Meyer & Allen, 1991) and with “and” in the sentence; three or more authors take “et al.” from the first citation (Delacre et al., 2017). Direct quotations carry a page number (p. 45), and quotations of 40 words or more become an indented block without quotation marks.

The reference list starts on a new page under the heading “References”, bold and centered. Entries are double-spaced with a 0.5-inch hanging indent and ordered alphabetically by the first author’s surname. Up to 20 authors are listed in full; for 21 or more, the first 19 are followed by an ellipsis and the final author. A DOI is written as a full link, https://doi.org/…, with no “doi:” prefix and no retrieval date; “Retrieved from” is used only for content that changes over time.

Publisher locations are omitted. Titles of articles and chapters are in sentence case without italics; book titles, journal names and volume numbers are italic.

Theses themselves have fixed forms. A published thesis available from a database or repository is cited as: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of thesis [Doctoral dissertation, Name of Institution]. Name of Database or Archive. URL. An unpublished thesis held only by the institution is cited as: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of thesis [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Name of Institution. Some universities ask for reference lists at the end of each chapter or for separate lists by language; where the handbook says so, it prevails.

Where do universities override APA?

The rule for conflicts in APA 7 thesis formatting is simple: the handbook is what the thesis is checked against, so follow it, apply the same choice throughout the document, and tell your supervisor that the departure from APA is deliberate.

Worked example: setting up an APA 7 thesis in Word

A student whose handbook adopts APA 7 with 1.5 spacing and a 35 mm binding margin set up the document in this order. Page setup: A4, margins 35 mm left and 25 mm elsewhere. Normal style: Times New Roman 12, 1.5 spacing, 0.5-inch first-line indent, left-aligned. Heading 1 to Heading 5 modified to the five APA levels, plus a custom Chapter Title style (centered, bold, page break before, outline level 1) so chapter titles enter the table of contents. Caption style set for two-line APA captions. A References style with a 0.5-inch hanging indent.

In Chapter 4 the hierarchy reads: Chapter 4 Results (chapter style), Descriptive Statistics (Level 1), Sample Characteristics (Level 2), Study Variables (Level 2).

The table caption reads “Table 4” in bold on the first line and Descriptive Statistics for the Study Variables (N = 312) in italics on the second, and the sentence that calls it out follows APA number rules: “Job satisfaction was high (M = 3.62, SD = 0.71) and did not differ significantly between women and men, t(310) = 1.94, p = .053, d = 0.22, 95% CI [−0.01, 0.45]; Table 4 presents the remaining variables.” Because every element is a style, the department’s later request to change the body font took one edit to Normal.

Which APA 7 thesis formatting mistakes do examiners notice?

• A “Running head:” label left over from the 6th edition, or a running head longer than 50 characters.
• Headings numbered in some chapters and not in others, or Level 3 formatted as Level 2 after copying between files.
• Reference entries in sentence case for some titles and title case for others, or “doi:” and “Retrieved from” mixed with bare links.
• Tables with vertical lines or shading, titles below the table, or no call-out in the text.
• Block quotations with quotation marks, or short quotations without page numbers.

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Frequently asked questions

Is a thesis a student paper or a professional paper in APA 7?

Neither. The manual leaves thesis format to the institution. In practice most templates look like a student paper in the header (page number only, no running head) while requiring the abstract and completeness of a professional manuscript, with the university’s own title page.

Should the headings in an APA thesis be numbered?

APA itself does not number headings. Many universities require numbered headings for theses, and that requirement overrides APA. Whichever you use, keep the five-level formatting consistent and generate numbers with a multilevel list rather than typing them.

Does APA 7 require Times New Roman 12?

No. The manual lists several acceptable fonts, including Calibri 11, Arial 11, Georgia 11 and Times New Roman 12, and asks only that one be used throughout. Your handbook may name a specific font; that choice prevails.

Where do tables go in an APA 7 thesis?

Embedded in the chapter, after the paragraph that first mentions them, at the top or bottom of a page. Placing all tables after the reference list is an option for journal manuscripts, not a thesis convention, unless the handbook says otherwise.

How do I cite another student’s thesis in APA 7?

Give the author, year, italic title, a bracketed description such as [Master’s thesis, Name of University] or [Unpublished doctoral dissertation], then the repository or database name and the URL for a published thesis, or the institution name for an unpublished one.

Sources

• American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
• American Psychological Association. Paper format: Title page, Headings, Font, Line spacing, Margins, Page header. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format
• American Psychological Association. Tables and figures. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures
• American Psychological Association. Reference examples: Published dissertation or thesis references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/published-dissertation-references
• University of Manchester. (2026, March). Presentation of Theses Policy. https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=7420 (accessed October 2026)
• University of York. Format your thesis. https://www.york.ac.uk/research/graduate-school/academic/thesis/format/ (accessed October 2026)

Sources last checked: November 2026. This article is general educational guidance and does not replace your university regulations or your supervisor’s instructions. How we prepare our content.