How to Format an APA Paper Cover Sheet With Multiple Authors

The American Psychological Association has created a list of guidelines, known as APA style, that is used for formatting research papers. College students refer to APA style when writing papers, especially those studying in the social science field. The APA style lists how to lay out information and details within the paper including everything from the cover page to the works-cited page.

Step 1

Set up the page in word processing program. Go to "Format" found in the menu at the top of your word processing program and click on "Paragraph." In the next window select "Centered" for your paper's justification and "Double-Spaced" for line spacing.

Step 2

Type in the paper's title. Hit the enter key 10 times which will put the first line approximately in the middle of the page. Type in your paper's title using appropriate capitalization. For example the title should look like this, "Media and Local Governments."

Step 3

Add the author's names. On the line immediately following the title, write in all of the author's names in your selected order. For example, "John Doe and Jane Smith" would be used for two authors. A comma would be added between names if there are more than three authors. For example, "John Doe, Jane Smith and Jack Bean." If possible, place all of the author's names on a single line.

Step 4

List the author's institutional affiliations. If all authors are from the same university you only need to write the university affiliation once. For example, on the line following the author's names you would write "University of Florida." However, if each author has a different affiliation you will need to list each one matching the order of the author's list. For example, if you have "John Doe, Jane Smith and Jack Bean," listed as authors, on the following line you would write "University of Florida, Florida State University and Florida Institute of Technology."

Step 5

Check the title page. Before finalizing the cover sheet of your paper, review that all author's names are listed, spelled correctly and have proper institutional affiliations listed. For example, the final order of the cover page should look like the following:

Step 6

Add the page's header. Select "View" from your word processor's top menu bar and choose "Header and Footer." Add the running head, which is your papers title, to the left side of the header and insert page number to the right. Page numbers can be added to the header by selecting "Add page number" from the header task bar found at the top of the page. For example, your running head should look like "Media and Local Governments" on the left and "Page 1" on the right.