2.13: APA Style Charts

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APA Style, as described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Seventh Edition), has specific ways to format the title of tables and graphs. We already talked about tables, now it's time to talk about graphs.

Graphs and pictures are considered figures (not tables). In APA Style, figure labels should be numbered and have a descriptive title. “Figure 1” should be in bold, and on the line above the title (which should be in italics). They both should be above the figure, flush-left. An example is below, and you can find more details at the best site to learn about APA Style: Purdue Online Writing Lab. Here is a link to OWL Purdue’s page on tables and figures in APA Style.

Example:

Note

Figure 1

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Figures should be near where they are being discussed in the appear or in an appendix (which would be the last section of the paper). Finally, make sure to always label your axes with a title and with the numbers/categories, not just the figure title.

That's it for graphs! I'll see you in the next chapter to talk about how to describe these distributions of data with just a few numbers!