APA Style is a set of guidelines defined by the American Psychological Association for standardizing the layout, language, and organization of research papers. These guidelines are published in The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Recently (July 2009), the APA issued the 6th edition, revising a number of rules in the manuscript format guidelines. Among these changes are:

• The "Running head" is now part of the page header, to be placed flush left at the top of the page, with the page number flush right.
• Section headings are now bolded; level 2 headings are no longer italicized.
• The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is now preferred (over URLs) for citations of articles, reports, and other research sources available on the internet.

In October, the APA released a number of corrections to the 6th edition format in the 2nd Printing of the Publication Manual:

• The words "Running head" are removed from the page header.
• Bold is now removed from heading text on the Abstract and References pages.

These corrections are posted on the APA website.

Dr Paper Version 6.1 provides compliance with the new APA 6th edition guidelines, as well as offering templates for the 5th edition.

If you purchased Dr Paper Version 6 prior to October 15, you will need to contact us to download the corrections. The reissue is available at no charge to version 6 users.

If you purchased the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, you most likely have the First Printing, which does not include these corrections. There will be a disparity between the Dr Paper templates and the sample papers in the manual. At this time, the APA is not offering to replace copies of the Publication Manual's first printing.

Dr Paper's APA Basics Guide summarizes the essential rules for APA format in a convenient, printable 2 sided pdf.