For the love of God, please explain how "Headings" work in APA style.

Factual Questions
1

Don’t laugh, but until now I’ve only ever used MLA format in my academic career. Now, however, I’ve got a paper in the pipeline that is consigned to APA format, and, no matter how hard I try, I just CANNOT wrap my brain around APA’s use of “Headings.”

Purdue OWL is not helpful because it neglects that fundamental questions I have about Headings to begin with: (1) First off, WTF are they? (2) Are they a mandatory component of any & all APA papers? If so, that’s going to dramatically screw up & monkeywrench the way that I’ve written until now. (3) If not mandatory, does that mean that their utility is dictated by the given professor?

Please help me out. Thanks.

2

Take a deep breath. Now, don’t worry. Just think “outline form” only with different formatting.

You may not put headings into your work but you probably could. But if you know outline form you know that you have a main heading, with subheads under it, and then possibly sub-subheadings under that. So your main heading for a given section is “level 1,” any subheadings under that main one are “level 2” and any subheads under those are “level 3.”

Now, your 1st-level heading, which might have a roman numeral if you use those, is centered, bold, using up-style capitalization.

2nd level headings are flush left, bold, up-style.

3rd level are indented, bold, with only the first word capitalized. Then unbold and run your first paragraph in (that is, don’t start a new paragraph, continue as if the heading was the beginning of your first paragraph, which it is).

4th level, if you get that far, is bold italic, indented the same as 3rd level.

5th level, if you get that far, is italic, indented the same as 3rd level.

(I have seen people use bold ital for 3rd level and bold for 4th level. If you’v been given some guidelines, follow them.)

So, to recap, if you have an outline like this:

I.
A.
1.
a.
b.
2.
B.

I = first level
A = 2nd level

  1. = 3rd level
    a. = 4th level
    i. = 5th level

I should say, if you only have one of a given subhead, then you don’t actually need a subhead for that section, and the first subhead is always the next level–you don’t jump from A. to a.

Also, as an editor I get lots of papers that have the headings numbered. Our house style is not to use numbers. I think APA style for publication is the same. However, if you want to make sure your headings are corresponding to your outline, keep the numbers until your last edit.

PS: Heading I is not “Introduction” and don’t even write the word over your introduction, likewise your conclusion. Unless, of course, your prof wants that.

ETA: I don’t know what happened to the spaces in my sample outline form, and I don’t know how to indent in vb!

3

I don’t think headings are mandatory, though it would be normal to have some section headings in a paper published in a psychology journal, which is what APA style is really designed for. Student essays are not really the same sort of thing.

Are you writing for publication (in which case, follow the format used in whatever journal you are aiming at for your first submission, and follow it exactly), or are you an undergraduate (or grad student, come to that) writing for a class? If it’s for a class, don’t sweat it. It is really not all that important (and any professor who dings your grade for minor departures form official style guidelines is an asshole.)

The APA style manual is huge, and has rules to cover just about every conceivable circumstance. It does not mandate that you have to use every possible sort of formatting that it covers, it just means that if you want to do such and such, in a paper that you intend to publish in an APA journal, this is the way to format it.

4

Heading I is very frequently “Introduction” (if it actually has a heading at all) in papers in APA journals, and the final main section is quite likely to be headed “Conclusion”. Some journals may insist on this.

5

I thought the Purdue site here was pretty informative:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/16/

As for your questions:

  1. Just a way to keep the paper well structured.
  2. No. I a graduate student at the moment, and I don’t think I have ever needed to use more than Level 1 headings.
  3. I think so. Or whomever you are submitting the paper to.

What kind of paper is it? What level coursework?

Have you figured out the Running Head? That took me a couple classes to get right.

6

I’m a third year undergrad, and the paper in question is essentially a critical analysis of given film that we’re watching in class.

7

God, as a librarian helping a lot of people at online schools which don’t help anybody do anything, that running heading… could you please explain that? Because I do NOT remember that from college. Is it just a thing you put in the heading? (Yeah, I’ve got the book available, obviously, but when I actually need it I never have it.)

8

Then I would say you probably do not need internal headings, unless you yourself feel they would help (or your professor has explicitly asked for them). Very likely, however, you are expected to include citations, and you need to pay attention to formatting your citations in proper APA style, with all the commas in the right places, and the right bits italicized, etc. No doubt the APA style guide lays down a format for citing movies (if you allude to other movies) as well as to books and articles. It is very comprehensive.

9

WRT citations: there are several great citation managers available, that will format your bibliography for you. Write ‘n’ Cite by RefWorks and Zotero are two of my favorites, as they have MSWord plugins. They will do MLA, APA, CMS… whatever you like. Check with your library’s website for licencing details - my university provides them for free to students.