How to Format Your CV or Resume

by Hannah Greenbaum

Our users often ask us how to format a curriculum vitae (CV) or resume in APA Style. The answer is simple: Do whatever you want! Seriously, APA does not provide guidelines, in the Publication Manual or elsewhere, for the style and layout of a CV or resume. However, if you choose to, or are instructed to, follow APA Style in your CV or resume, you can adapt components (e.g., references, guidelines for hyphenation, and other writing guidelines) of APA Style as presented in the Publication Manual. You probably wouldn’t want to use some APA Style formatting, like double-spacing because you want to showcase your experience and skills in a small space.

You might still wonder what to do even if there aren’t APA rules to follow. I understand this personally because questions flooded my mind when I began applying to graduate school . . . not the least of which were "How do I write a CV? Or resume? What is the difference?! 😤"

A CV (curriculum vitae) is Latin for "course of life" and is generally longer, academically focused, and more comprehensive than a resume. A resume is French for "summary" and is typically a one-page document showcasing more professionally oriented experiences and skills. (UC Davis Internship & Career Center, 2015)

Several years later, and near the completion of a doctoral degree in counseling psychology, I consistently add to my CV as I attain academic and professional experiences. I also have one-page resumes on hand and resumes tailored to specific kinds of employment.

Another tip is to look to the CVs of your advisors, mentors, and trusted academic colleagues for examples. Some people boldface their own name when it appears as part of a reference for previously published works or spell out all author names when their name would otherwise be omitted by an ellipsis. To indicate contributions to works when you are not listed as an author, you can create a section and explain what you did. These are suggestions; in the end you have latitude to organize these documents in a way that makes sense to you (just be sure to include relevant information). Some employers provide guidelines. Write with your audience in mind.

I have also found the following articles helpful. The more examples you expose yourself to, the better. Find a format that works for you and that fits the type of experience you are seeking.

• Build a Better CV
• CV Dos and Don'ts
• Curriculum Vitae Dos and Don'ts
• Resume vs. Curriculum Vitae: What’s the Difference?

Now go live your life and enjoy your experiences! But remember to document your accomplishments in your CV and resume!

Reference

UC Davis Internship and Career Center. (2015). Resume vs. curriculum vitae: What's the difference? Retrieved from https://icc.ucdavis.edu/materials/resume/resumecv.htm

Widows and Orphans and Bears, Oh My!

By David Becker

Dear APA Style Experts,

Is it okay for a heading to be alone at the very bottom of a page while the first paragraph of that section begins at the top of the next page? I checked page 62 in the Publication Manual where it talks about levels of heading, but I couldn’t find any answers to this question. Please help!

—Keith T.

Dear Keith,

Yes, in an APA Style manuscript, it’s perfectly fine to have a heading at the bottom of one page with the body of the section starting on the next page. In fact, you can see examples of this at the beginning of Sample Paper 2 (see pp. 54–55 in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual; the sample papers are also accessible online via our “Best of the APA Style Blog” post).

Lonely headings like these are sometimes called orphans in typesetting. An orphan can also mean the first line of a paragraph that’s left all alone at the bottom of a page. When the last line of a paragraph appears by itself at the top of the page, typesetters may refer to it as a widow. Widows, like orphans, are acceptable in APA Style manuscripts.

However, if you’re a student writing a class paper or a dissertation, your professor or university may have standards that differ from APA Style. They might prohibit widows and orphans. Universities have particularly precise criteria for dissertations and theses that often address widows and orphans—sometimes even specifying the minimum number of lines of text that can appear on the same page as a table. Your professor or a dissertation committee will be the ones evaluating your work, not APA, so their standards supersede those in the Publication Manual. You should therefore ask your professor or dissertation advisor about whether widows and orphans are acceptable.

You may be wondering why the Publication Manual doesn’t discuss widows and orphans. This is because the guidelines in the manual were designed with draft journal articles in mind. They don’t directly address issues that are more relevant to a final article’s appearance and composition, including widows and orphans, which are sorted out during typesetting. Publishers generally determine what their articles will look like when they go to print, so they establish their own typesetting standards. Although the Publication Manual doesn’t weigh in on these issues, section 8.06 (pp. 239–240) briefly addresses an author’s responsibilities during typesetting, which includes sending the manuscript files to the publisher in an acceptable format and double-checking the typeset page proofs for any errors.

Although some aspects of a draft manuscript carry over into the typeset version—the reference list follows the same APA Style guidelines, for example—the appearance and composition of the article will change drastically. The font type and size, the margins, and the line spacing are all typically very different after typesetting. Some articles will also be formatted so that the text is split into two columns. And, the tables and figures that appear at the end of the manuscript will be embedded close to their first mention in the text. All this rearranging and redesigning means that what were once widows and orphans in a draft manuscript will likely be in completely different places in the final version. There’s no reason to be too concerned about these lonely lines of text during the draft stage if they will be reunited with their lost relatives during typesetting and appear together in the final article.

If you’re a student, your schoolwork won’t go through this whole process before it’s finalized. Your paper is considered “final” when you submit it to your professor. For example, a dissertation, once submitted, becomes the final, published version of record. Therefore, it’s important to consider the final appearance of your paper during the draft stage. Some formatting issues not covered in the Publication Manual will need to be addressed while you’re writing your paper. When in doubt, always check with your professor or university to see if they have their own preferred standards.

And, in case you were wondering, APA Style doesn’t have any guidelines concerning bears. I doubt your professor or university will have any either.

The Origins of APA Style

by Anne Breitenbach 

APA Style is older than virtually all of its users—if you were born after 1929, then APA Style is older than you are. But just because APA Style is nearing its 10th decade doesn’t mean that its origins need to be lost to the mists of time. This post will share some of the origins of APA Style.

The first glimmer of what has become APA Style emerged in a seven-page article published by the Conference of Editors and Business Managers of Anthropological and Psychological Periodicals following a 2-day meeting in Washington, DC. This article appeared in one of psychology’s preeminent journals, APA’s own Psychological Bulletin.

A prime incentive for publishing that first article was to save publishers money and time, as submitted manuscripts were often too long, inconsistently formatted, and wandered through their content. The authors were responding to a real need and genuinely trying to help would-be authors as well as improve the quality of the submissions. That they were aware that setting guidelines has a substantial and direct effect on those would-be authors is evident, as is conveyed by the downright diffident tone of their opening paragraphs.

The committee realizes that it neither has, nor wishes to assume, any authority in dictating to authors, publishers or editors; but it suggests the following recommendations for use as a standard of procedure, to which exceptions would doubtless be necessary, but to which reference might be made in cases of doubt, and which might be cited to authors for their general guidance in the preparation of scientific articles. (Bentley et al., 1929, p. 57)

In those seven pages you can find the core of the APA Style you know and love. Authors are urged to brevity in making their arguments; use of headings to impose logical structure; and subdivision into an introduction, statement of results, and discussion. There is a discussion of what to cite and how to cite a reference, and space is given to the use of tables and figures. Other familiar elements are not yet present and will be added over time. For example, there is no guidance on writing style or grammar—beyond the exhortation that those who are incompetent should get help. Reference types were few, and so the explosion of reference formats lies in the future. Nor would you have found instruction on how to avoid plagiarism or use bias-free language to write sensitively about participants or people in general.

As the APA Style Publication Manual evolved into its current sixth edition, the content has expanded and the tone has become more confident of a right, even a responsibility, to set standards, at least in APA’s own journals. In the future, especially given the explosion of digital technologies now used to disseminate content, we will continue striving to ensure that clear communication continues.

Reference

Bentley, M., Peerenboom, C. A., Hodge, F. W., Passano, E. B., Warren, H. C., & Washburn, M. F. (1929). Instructions in regard to preparation of manuscript. Psychological Bulletin, 26, 57–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0071487

Giving Thanks in APA Style

By David Becker

It’s Thanksgiving, that time of year when you can thank your friends, family, and all the other important people in your life by bringing them together for a massive, fun-filled feast. If you’re a researcher about to publish the results of a recent study, you may also want to give thanks to those who helped you conduct it or prepare your manuscript. Inviting them to Thanksgiving dinner would certainly be a great way to express gratitude, but you can also thank them in an author note.

The author note, which is explained on pages 24–25 in the Publication Manual, generally appears in the footer of a published journal article. In a draft manuscript, it is part of the title page (see the order of manuscript pages on page 229 in the Publication Manual). Most student papers do not include one. You can find examples of the author note through our Best of the Blog post. Sample paper 1 demonstrates the author note's typical location in a draft manuscript, and the sample published paper shows what an author note looks like in a journal article.

The author note usually lists the authors’ departmental affiliations and contact information, states any disclaimers and potential conflicts of interest, and provides acknowledgments. These acknowledgments can be included in the third paragraph and used to identify grants or other financial support, explain any special authorship agreements, and thank those who provided personal assistance. Generally, you don't need to acknowledge peer reviewers, journal editors, or others who routinely review and accept manuscripts.

Personal assistance encompasses individuals whose work may not warrant authorship credit—that is, they didn’t do any actual writing or make significant scientific contributions (see pages 18–19 in the Publication Manual and Standard 8.12 of the APA Ethics Code for more details about defining and assigning authorship)—but their assistance was nonetheless valuable and deserving of some form of credit. Maybe you would like to thank some students who helped recruit research participants and collect data, or perhaps a couple friends and colleagues who took some time out of their busy schedules to proofread the first draft of your manuscript before you submitted it for publication. You can thank them in the acknowledgments section of your author note. It may not be tasty—or even edible—like a Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m sure your benevolent contributors will appreciate the recognition.

Happy Acknowledgmentsgiving!

Keywords in APA Style

by Timothy McAdoo

What are keywords?

If you’ve searched PsycINFO, Google Scholar, or other databases, you’ve probably run across keywords. In APA Style articles, they appear just under the abstract. They are usually supplied by an article’s author(s), and they help databases create accurate search results.

How do I pick my keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases that you feel capture the most important aspects of your paper. To create yours, just think about the topics in your paper: What words would you enter into a search box to find your paper? Use those!

We call these natural-language words, because they reflect the way people really talk about, and search for, a topic. In fact, in some databases, to provide comprehensive results, the “keywords” search option actually searches the article titles and abstracts along with these designated keywords.

In short, when later researchers are searching PsycINFO or other research databases, the keywords help them find your work.

For example, if you’ve written a paper about the benefits of social media for people with anxiety, your keywords line might be as follows:

Keywords: anxiety, social media, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat

Note how I’ve included the social media platform names. Keywords don’t have to be formal; they just have to be useful! These keywords will help the later researcher who searches for one of those terms or a combinations of them (e.g., “anxiety and social media,” “anxiety, Facebook, and Twitter”).

Also, because these are natural-language words, keywords can include acronyms. Keywords for a paper on using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test with patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder might look like this:

Keywords: Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, WCST, OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder

The Publication Manual does not place a limit on how many keywords you may use. However, to be most effective, keywords should be a concise summary of your paper’s content. We recommend three to five keywords.

Where do they go?

The keywords line should begin indented like a paragraph. (In typeset APA journal articles, the keywords line is aligned under the abstract.)  Keywords: should be italicized, followed by a space. The words themselves should not be italicized. You can see an example under the abstract in this APA Style sample paper.

Note (02/01/2016): An earlier version of this post indicated that the keywords line should be centered. This was corrected in the paragraph above.

And In Other Research News: Student Research Webinars From APA and Psi Chi

By Anne Breitenbach

You know, APA Style Experts don’t spend their whole lives in a glamorous ivory tower, as you no doubt imagine of people who spend their days with a pointy green pencil, a heap of style manuals, and a set of bookmarks to some of the Internet’s most enticing grammar sites. No, sometimes we step out from our secret blog and Twitter identities to talk to people directly. Well, almost. We come a step closer and talk anyway—via webinar.  It may also surprise you to know that we have other professional research interests in addition to APA Style.  Today, the Style blog has graciously yielded the floor to me to talk about one of those other initiatives that we thought some of you might find useful.

In 2014 APA introduced a new student training feature. We hosted a series of webinars jointly with Psi Chi. We conducted four session last year led by Psi Chi graduate students and staff from various departments of APA. Each of the webinars was also recorded and is now available on YouTube.

Here is information about each of those sessions and a YouTube link and direct access for each:

Psi Chi-APA Training: Tests and Measures, April 2, 2014

Psi Chi’s Lesther Papa, a Utah State University doctoral student, discussed his process for evaluating, adapting, and creating tests. APA PsycINFO trainer Anne Breitenbach explored how the PsycINFO and PsycTESTS databases can help researchers with those tasks.

http://bit.ly/pschi_test

Psi Chi-APA Training: Statistics for Student Publication, June 5, 2014

Psi Chi’s Lesther Papa shared tips on determining what test to use and covered a number of statistical concepts.  APA Books Product Development Supervisor Chelsea Lee continued the discussion with APA Style guidelines on statistical presentation in text, tables, and figures.

http://bit.ly/1pgnSKF

Psi Chi APA Training: Theory to Practice, September 29, 2014

Psi Chi’s Spencer Richards, a doctoral candidate in Clinical/Counseling/School psychology at Utah State University, discussed how important his relevant work experience was to his commitment to the discipline--and to getting into graduate school! PsycINFO’s Anne Breitenbach demonstrated how the PsycTHERAPY database can help bring realism into the classroom.

http://bit.ly/1udgXqz

Psi Chi APA:  How to Publish While a Student, December 11, 2014

Psi Chi members—and published authors—Rachel Cook of Arizona State University and Liz Brown of Duquesne University discussed the steps to publication and its advantages. APA Journals Editorial Coordinator Sharon Ramos provided pointers from the publisher’s side.

http://bit.ly/1tJPgT1

Please feel free to share these with others via your own websites and blogs or Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or old-fashioned email!

Making a List, Checking It Twice

 

By Anne Breitenbach

You know what I love? Assembly instructions.Recipes. Rules of engagement. Game plans. In essence, any tool that helps me clearly define what I need to have on hand to do a project properly and what steps I will need to take to complete it. So the first thing I do each morning when I arrive at my desk (well, after getting coffee) is jot down a checklist of what I hope to accomplish on this day. It gives me goals, focuses me, keeps tasks from getting lost, and—perhaps best of all—allows me to strike through each as it’s completed. (Microambition provides pretty constant self-congratulatory feedback.)   I’m not alone in my appreciation of checklists either.  Researchers, authors, and students ask us all the time if there is a roadmap to achieving a paper or a manuscript created correctly in APA Style.

So I’ve convinced you, right? You grab the Publication Manual and flip to the index looking for a handy “checklist” entry. I’m afraid it isn’t quite that clear cut. There are checklists of various kinds, but you have to know your manual or supporting APA resources well enough to know what and where they are and how to use them.  Let’s look at some examples. 

At the end of Chapter 8, “The Publication Process,” in section 8.07, you’ll find a précis of what a “good” manuscript looks like, with sections on format, title page and abstract, paragraphs and headings, abbreviations, mathematics and statistics, units of measurement, references, notes and footnotes, tables and figures, and copyright and quotations. This Checklist for Manuscript Submission is also available online in the Authors and Reviewers Resource Center on our website. Although designed for authors, it is just as handy as a cheat sheet for students. A bonus is that it provides you with the relevant section numbers in the Publication Manual! 

In fact, at the end of several sections you’ll also find a checklist. For example, section 5.19 summarizes the information about tables and reminds you, among other elements, to use tables only when necessary, review for consistency of presentation, keep your title brief, ensure all columns have a column head, define abbreviations, construct notes appropriately, and provide suggested statistics. It’s a very useful way to check that you’ve complied with all the recommendations. 

And the checklists don’t stop there. There’s one for figures in section 5.30 at the close of the figures section to gently remind you to use simple and clear figures that are clearly labeled. It reminds you to ensure the figures appear in order and are discussed in the text. It also reminded me of several other steps that I just had to go back to the checklist and check.

Of course, not all checklists may be so benign. You know who else loves checklists? That’s right. Santa’s making his list and checking it twice. Things might go better for you if he knows you're a checklist user too.

 

Making a Concrete Abstract

by Anne Breitenbach

The Publication Manual (2.04) states that “A well-prepared abstract can be the most important single paragraph in an article.”  Indeed, it would be hard to overstate the abstract’s importance if you want to publish and actually have your work read and cited. Your article (or dissertation or conference presentation) uses a ploy similar to that of an anglerfish.  The abstract is the lure that beguiles the elusive researcher to the article, much as the fleshy growth suspended from an anglerfish’s head entices its prey.  (There are differences, of course. The anglerfish lurks in underwater caves and lures its prey by a long filament, whereas your article lurks in a journal and seductively waves its abstract from a bibliographic database such as Dissertation Abstracts or APA’s own PsycINFO. Other differences include that most research doesn’t try to engulf its reader whole.)  

The abstract’s special functions determine the specifics of its form. Rule 2.04 tells us that it should do three things well:

First, it needs to find its audience. Practically, that means you need to embed keywords that “enhance the user’s ability to find it.”  This is an excellent example of a place where Mark Twain’s dictum applies. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” You need to use current, intuitive, and accurate terminology. We’ll talk more about keywords in an upcoming post.

Second, it’s got to be a good abstract. That is, it needs to encapsulate the essence of the article in a way that gives all essential information but sifts out the inessential. The core of that information is consistent across articles, but specific kinds of articles—for example, a literature review or meta-analysis, a theory-oriented paper, or a case study—also have specific requirements.  We’ll talk more about what elements all articles require and what particular elements specific kinds of articles require in an upcoming post.

Third, yep, it needs to be in APA Style.  And because there are special rules that apply to abstracts in terms of length (word limits vary from journal to journal and typically range from 150 to 250 words), required elements, and need to make sense in isolation from the article, there are a number of rules that are unique to the abstract. For example, there are specific rules that apply to numbers, to abbreviations, to citations. Those too we’ll explore in an upcoming post.

Journal Article Reporting Standards: How Do They Work?

by Harris Cooper, PhD

Last week I discussed why APA’s Journal Article Reporting Standards (the JARS) are needed when you are writing your psychology research report. I compared a psychology research paper to assembly instructions, like those you would follow when constructing a shelf or putting a bike together. Without a list of materials and clear instructions, others will find it difficult to understand what you did and to repeat your experiment. In this post, I describe how the JARS works. (For more detail about why the JARS is needed and how it works, see my book, Reporting Research in Psychology: How to Meet Journal Article Reporting Standards, which was released by APA this week.)

The JARS first focuses on information recommended for inclusion in all reports. These recommendations are organized by the parts of a research report: title, abstract, introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion. For example, here are the characteristics of sampling procedures that the JARS recommends be described in the Method section of every report:

• Sampling method, if a systematic sampling plan was implemented
• Percentage of sample approached that participated
• Self-selection (by either individuals or units, such as schools or clinics)
• Settings and locations where data were collected
• Agreements and payments made to participants
• Institutional review board agreements, ethical standards met, and safety monitoring

If a study is conducted with a college or university subject pool, the description of the sampling procedure is pretty straightforward. But, if a study involves, say, a classroom intervention, you can see how the description can become more involved. In both cases, however, if we don’t know this information about the study, it would be hard to determine to whom the results of the study apply.
After the recommendations that pertain to all reports, the JARS asks that researchers pay careful attention to reporting the research design. Research designs come in a variety of forms depending on the type of question that motivates the research. Therefore, each design requires unique information.
The JARS currently provides standards for only one family of designs, those involving purposive or experimental manipulations or interventions. Among the information requested are these aspects of the manipulation:

• Setting (where the manipulations or interventions occurred)
• Exposure quantity and duration (how many sessions, episodes, or events were intended to be delivered and how long they were intended to last)
• Time span (how long it took to deliver the intervention or manipulation to each unit)
• Activities to increase compliance or adherence (e.g., incentives)

So, if a study evaluates the effect of providing tutoring for children having difficulty learning to read, the JARS recommends that the report tell readers where the tutoring took place (e.g., in the regular classroom or a resource room; before, during, or after school); how often tutors met with students and for how long; whether the intervention lasted a week, a month, a semester, or a year; and whether the students received some incentive to take part in the tutoring and to stay involved.

The JARS module on experimental manipulations also asks whether the researcher (a) randomly assigned participants to conditions or (b) assigned participants to conditions using another type of procedure; depending on the assignment procedures, the researcher asks additional questions about how the assignment was accomplished.

Of course, this is just a sampling of the information requested in the JARS. As you look at the full JARS, it might seem daunting to provide all the information. But really, everything asked for should be known about a study. The JARS helps researchers remember what’s important about their study and ensures their study remains a valuable contribution to the psychology literature.

Running Head Format for APA Style Papers

 by Chelsea Lee

If you've ever been confused by what a running head is or wondered how to format one for an APA Style paper, read on. 

What Is a Running Head?

A running head is a short title that appears at the top of every page of your paper in the page header. The running head identifies the pages for the reader in case they get separated, and if you submit your paper for publication, it does this while preserving your anonymity during the review process (that is why the running head is a short title and not your name). In published articles the running head also identifies the article for the reader at a glance.

The length of the running head should be 50 characters or fewer, including spaces and other punctuation marks. If your paper title is already 50 characters or fewer, you can use the paper title as the running head. Otherwise, you can shorten your paper title however you want. Here is an example: 

Paper title: What Do Undergraduates Learn About Human Intelligence? An Analysis of Introductory Psychology Textbooks   Running head: UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING ABOUT INTELLIGENCE

Formatting Instructions

The running head appears in the header of every page along with the page number. (The header by nature is situated within the top margin of your paper; all the margins themselves should be set to 1 inch.) On the first page of the paper only, the running head is preceded by the words Running head and a colon. On all other pages, just the running head itself and the page number appear, without the label Running head:.

These requirements mean you will probably need to set your word-processing program to have a different header on the first page. If you use APA Style CENTRAL to write your papers, the page header and running head will be formatting automatically for you.

If you use Microsoft Word to write your papers, you will have to take a few steps to get a different first page header. The basic premise in Microsoft Word is that you will click into the header of the paper, go to the Header & Footer Tools menu, and then click "Different First Page." 

Once you have set your paper to have a different first page header in Microsoft Word, follow these directions to set up the header on the first page of the paper: 

• Add a page number using the automatic page numbering function.
• Put the page number in the upper right-hand corner.
• In the header, type the label Running head: (not in italic, with only the "R" capitalized), and then type the running head itself in all capital letters, making sure it is no longer than 50 characters (including spaces and other punctuation).
• Place the cursor between the end of the running head and the page number and hit the tab key to left justify the running head while leaving the page number right justified.
• If necessary, change the font in the header to 12-point Times New Roman. 

The first page header will look like this: 

 

On the second page of the paper, repeat the process of inserting the page number and running head into the page header, except do not include the label Running head. The header on the second and subsequent pages will look like this:

The page header should now be correctly formatted for APA Style on all pages of your paper. You can also see examples of the running head format in our APA Style sample papers.

Other Directions and Running Head Template

The screenshots in this post are from Word 2016; if you are using another version of Microsoft Word, follow these directions from Microsoft to set up the header. If you use other word-processing software, please feel free to share links or instructions in the comments. 

I've also created a running head template for Word you can download that has the running head set up for you already.

 

Please note this post has been updated as of May 9, 2018, to include instructions for newer versions of Microsoft Word as well as to show more examples and provide a template.

If you've ever been confused by what a running head is or wondered how to format one for an APA Style paper, read on.