Your abstract should appear by itself on page 2 of your paper. Recall that the running head should now appear left-justified in the header on this page and on every page that follows. (Also recall that, starting on this page, the running head should be only your abbreviated title in all caps, without the words “Running head:" at the beginning.)

Content

Your abstract should be no more than 250 words and should summarize your entire paper, from literature review to discussion.

Formatting

This page should simply be titled “Abstract”; the title should be centered (and not bolded, underlined, or italicized) and should appear in the first line. The abstract itself should start on the following line.

The entire abstract should be only one paragraph, and it is the only paragraph in your paper that is not indented at the beginning—the entire paragraph should be left-justified along the margin.

Any number that appears in the abstract should be written as a numeral (e.g., 1.5, 300) rather than spelled out (e.g., one and a half, three hundred) unless it begins a sentence—then it should be spelled out (e.g., "Three hundred children ate 1.5 sandwiches each”).

Keywords (Optional)

APA style also includes guidelines for providing keywords under your abstract, but this is only required in some situations. If your professor doesn’t mention it, you probably don’t need to include them.

That said, if you do need to include keywords, they should appear on the line immediately after the last line of your abstract. Begin the list with the italicized word “Keywords:”. Then, include a list of 3–10 words or phrases relevant to your paper topic; separate them with commas, and do not end with a period. For example, if you’re writing about people’s experiences of anxiety in stressful situations, you might include the keywords “anxiety” and “stress."

Abstract

This is an example of an abstract properly formatted in APA style.