apa.cls

Contents

• Introduction
• Author and version
• Maintainance and request for help
• Acknowledgments
• System requirements
• Instructions for using apa.cls
  • Title and headers
  • Sectioning
  • Enumeration and seriation
  • Figures and tables
  • Conditional compilation
  • Fonts
  • Bibliography and citations
  • Appendices
  • Non-English documents
• List of apa.cls commands
• List of options to apa.cls
• Possible problems

Introduction

Note: apa.cls is not in any way connected to or endorsed by the American Psychological Association.

An article (in Greek) about apa.cls can be found in the first issue of Eutupon, the magazine of the Greek Tex Friends Group. A more recent article in English is also availabe.

Warning: apa.cls has a well defined scope and purpose, and I'm already too busy for it. Please don't request modifications or features that are not related to the stated purpose (which is to create manuscripts suitable for submission to APA journals and to typeset these same manuscripts in true journal look). For example, if you want the figures in the manuscript text but the rest as in man mode, then you're on your own as to how you might modify apa.cls (or not) to achieve that. In particular, if you want to write your thesis, apa.cls is not for you. Please do not write to me asking for help with this. Use apacite for APA-style citations and write your own typesetting code or search for a thesis class suitable for your University.

Manuscript look (man mode)

Regular LaTeX look (doc mode)

Author and version

apa.cls is distributed under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public License (lppl). In short, this means that the software is copyright but you are granted “a license which gives you, the ‘user’ of the software, legal permission to copy, distribute, and/or modify the software. However, if you modify the software and then distribute it (even just locally) you must change the name of the software to avoid confusion” (quoted from The TeX Catalogue License Definitions).

The history of apa.cls revisions can be found in the CHANGELOG file.

Maintainance and request for help

• Stop messing with captions and use a standard package such as caption2 or ccaption for all cases
• Stop messing with endfloat and use loflot or other appropriate package for the captions page
• Use fancyhdr for all headings in all modes
• Set entire appendix in smaller font size (including headings)
• Follow manual guidelines for table "Note" vs. probabilities (3.70/p. 170)
• Turn wide tables sideways automatically
• Clean up the font act — remove rm/hrm/hsl etc.
• Use the geometry package to set margins taking into account paper size (letter, A4)
• Add contact information command and field for first page (man mode only)
• Confirm need for continuation note at page end required with long tables (5.21/p. 301) and modify accordingly.

Although this is a purely “free time” project for me, in general I have tried to be responsive about requests related to apa.cls and especially when bugs or other problems are involved. Do not hesitate to contact me if you encounter difficulties or unexpected (or unacceptable) behavior when using apa.cls to prepare manuscripts for submission, after you have searched apacls.txt and examples.txt and failed to find an answer to your problem. Don't even think about writing to me about using apa.cls for any purpose other than preparing an APA style manuscript for submission to a journal.

Acknowledgments

System requirements

Instructions for using apa.cls

To use apa.cls, include one of the following at the top of your document preamble:

\documentclass[jou]{apa}
\documentclass[man]{apa}
\documentclass[doc]{apa}

You should not load the article class because it is automatically called by apa.cls. You should also not load any of the required or optional packages mentioned above using the command \usepackage because they are automatically loaded by apa.cls in the appropriate order.

Title and header information

\author{First Author and Second Author}
\affiliation{Department of Both Authors\\ University}

If there is only one author or more than one author but all in the same department, use the \author command as in the above example, with all names in its argument; and use the \affiliation command for the department. If there are people from two different departments, use the \twoauthors and \twoaffiliations commands to group them appropriately:

\twoauthors{First Author(s)}{Second Author(s)}
\twoaffiliations{Affiliation of 1st Author(s)}{Affiliation of 2nd Author(s)}

For three affiliations use \threeauthors and \threeaffiliations, and for four affiliations there's \fourauthors and \fouraffiliations. Five and six affiliations (and corresponding authors or author groups) are similarly supported (\fiveauthors and so on). If there are more than six departments involved you're out of luck with apa.cls and I doubt they would fit on the title page anyways.

In addition to authors and their affiliations, you should also define the following:

\abstract{Text of your abstract...}
\acknowledgements{Author notes, acknowledgements, contact information...}
\rightheader{Running head for journal look}
\shorttitle{Short title for manuscript header}
\leftheader{Left head for journal look}

These fields are not technically necessary for the document to pass through LaTeX, though they are obligatory for any real APA-style manuscript. If you don't define a right header or short title, they default to the title; if you don't define a left header, it defaults to the author name(s).

You may also define a note if you want:

\note{Date of current draft; or status; or additional address information...}

If you really want your document to have the journal look, you should also define the fields for the first page header, which in the journals hold reference and copyright information. In apa.cls there are:

\journal{Journal name}
\volume{Volume, number, pages}
\ccoppy{Copyright notice}
\copnum{Serial number or other reference}

The content of these definitions is ignored in man mode (manuscript look), of course.

After these definitions in the preamble, you begin your manuscript in the regular LaTeX way and invoke the command to make the title page:

\begin{document}
\maketitle

Do not leave a blank line between these two commands. Also, do not leave a blank line between \maketitle and the beginning of your (introduction) text, either. This is important for the correct typesetting of the first manuscript page.

Sectioning

If you need more or fewer heading levels, you can use the command \headinglevels{four} (or any number between one and five—spelled out—instead of four) and then use \paragraph and \subparagraph for the lower-level sectioning. Actually, if you need fewer than three levels you don't really need to do anything other than use only \section and \subsection, but if you do invoke the \headinglevels command, then the appearance of the manuscript will strictly conform to the APA guidelines for the fewer levels.

Note: Don't bother to \label your sections; since they are not numbered according to APA style, they cannot be referenced elsewhere in the document using \ref, so there is no point in labeling them.

Enumeration and seriation

Float placement, loading, and content

Remember to use \label for floats after the caption (and not inside it!)

Images

An image can be included in any way you like, but apa.cls provides a way to deal automatically with fitting encapsulated postscript (EPS) files without worrying about dimensions or mode. Just use the command \fitfigure instead of \includegraphics. For example, if you want to include a graph from file graph1.eps, the simplest (and recommended) way is:

\begin{figure}[tp]
\fitfigure{graph1}
\caption{This is the caption of the figure.}
\label{fig:fig1}
\end{figure}

You may include the image file extension (.eps in this case) in the \fitfigure or \includegraphics command, but if you omit it (as in the example), then if you happen to use pdflatex it will automatically load the corresponding .pdf graphic file (assuming you have made one with eps2pdf), while dvips will load the .eps file. In short, you don't need the extension, and leaving it out may make your life easier.

In case of a bitmap eps (as opposed to a graph or line drawing), you probably don't want it scaled in man mode, for best reproduction, so use \fitbitmap instead.

Note: If you want to include images in your manuscript, don't forget the command \usepackage{graphicx} in your preamble! You should not use epsfig or graphics instead of graphicx.

Tables

To match the APA-journal look you can use \thickline (instead of \hline) for the top separator (right after starting the tabular environment).

Because a paragraph break is inserted in manuscript mode (optionally with an “insert table/figure” note), don't define tables in the middle of a paragraph.

Wide (two-column) tables and figures

When using double column figures, it looks better in jou mode if you use \centeredcaption instead of caption, with the first parameter about equal to the width of the float (table or figure). This makes no difference in man mode.

If your table is too wide to fit upright on a manuscript page, load the rotating package and use a sidewaystable environment (instead of table). You need the special configuration file endfloat.cfg, supplied with apa.cls, for this to work.

Long tables

Since longtable only works in single-column documents it can only be used with man mode. Unfortunately the conditional compilation (ifapamode) commands won't work to keep a single table body and apply a mode-specific (table or longtable) environment because of illegal cross-nesting with environment begin/end. In fact the table environment won't even work inside in ifapamode argument, which makes it impossible to have a single file that can be processed for both man and jou. This defeats the purpose of apa.cls, so only resort to longtable if you absolutely have to. You will need the supplied endfloat.cfg to use it.

A simpler, less clean solution for long tables (not using any specialized package) is shown on page 47 of an article about apa.cls.

Notes in tables

Conditional compilation

\ifapamodeman{This is printed in man mode only}{This is not man mode}

You can also use the three-way switch:

The current mode is \ifapamode{man}{jou}{doc}

Document typefaces

The manuscript format (man mode) uses Computer Modern by default but can use Helvetica or typewriter look by using the options helv or tt, respectively. I find the result with either of these much more “manuscript”-like looking, especially using tt (\documentclass[man,tt]{apa}), but that's a matter of taste. These options have no effect in modes other than man and may be left in when switching.

In the document format (doc mode), Computer Modern are used be default and should probably be used all the time since, after all, this is supposed to be the most “regular” LaTeX-like format.

Bibliography and citations

At the end of your document, before any appendices, issue the \bibliography command with the file names of the relevant bib files (standard bibtex usage). Do not use a \bibliographystyle command, because apacite is selected and loaded automatically (however, for backwards compatibility, any existing \bibliographystyle command is nicely ignored with a warning).

BibLaTeX update: As of version 1.3.4, apa.cls can also be used with BibLaTeX (with the biblatex-apa style by Philip Kime). Use the noapacite option to apa.cls to prevent it from automatically loading apacite. You can then load biblatex as usual and use the biblatex-apa package for citations and references. See the biblatex documentation and biblatex-apa documentation.

Appendices

\section{Appendix Title}

to start an appendix (even if there is only one). Each appendix has its title, while numbering (“Appendix A,” “Appendix B” etc.) is taken care of automatically in case there are more than one appendices.

You are free to use figures and tables in the usual way in the appendix(es). apa.cls will number them correctly and include them in the table and figure lists where they belong.

You may use cross-references to appendixes, because they are numbered, if there are more than one. A command such as \label{app:xxx} after the appendix \section sets the label. Then you may refer to this appendix with

Appendix~\ref{app:xxx}

from anywhere in your manuscript.

Non-English documents

\documentclass[man,babel,english,dutch]{apa}

\documentclass[man,babel,greek,english]{apa}

apa.cls produces certain strings in the manuscript, mostly as titles to obligatory sections (pages): “Running head,” “Author note,” “Figure captions,” and “Footnotes” (other strings, such as “Abstract,” “References,” and the float labels “Table” and “Figure” are handled by babel and/or apacite). These strings are defined in external files, so new ones can easily be added. These files are named with the language name (as known by babel) and the extension .apa (for example, greek.apa). If the definitions for your languages are not supplied with apa.cls, copy english.apa with the new file name for your language, and edit the macro definitions inside the new file to display the correct strings in the new language. Send me the new file so it can be included with future distributions of apa.cls.

Miscellaneous

If you need to use additional options for article.cls, list them as apa.cls options and they will be automatically passed along to article.cls.

List of apa.cls commands

 \abstract{Abstract text}                    
 \acknowledgements{Author notes etc.}   
 \affiliation{Department\\ University}  
   \twoaffiliations{Affiliation of 1st Author(s)}{Affil. of 2nd Author(s)}
   \threeaffiliations{...}{...}{...}
   \fouraffiliations{...}{...}{...}{...}
   \fiveaffiliations{...}{...}{...}{...}{...}
   \sixaffiliations{...}{...}{...}{...}{...}{...}
 \apamatrix{M}
 \apavector{A}
 \appendix
 \author{Author Name(s)}                
   \twoauthors{First Author(s)}{Second Author(s)}
   \threeauthors{...}{...}{...}
   \fourauthors{...}{...}{...}{...}
   \fiveauthors{...}{...}{...}{...}{...}
   \sixauthors{...}{...}{...}{...}{...}{...}
 \ccoppy{Copyright notice}
 \centeredcaption{width}{caption-text}
 \copnum{Serial number}
 \fitbitmap[optional-height]{eps-filename}
 \fitfigure[optional-height]{eps-filename}
 \ifapamode{man-code}{jou-code}{doc-code}
 \ifapamodeman{man-mode-code}{doc-or-jou-code}
 \ifapamodejou{jou-mode-code}{doc-or-man-code}
 \ifapamodedoc{doc-mode-code}{man-or-jou-code}
 \leftheader{Author name list}
 \journal{Journal name}
 \maketitle
 \note{Draft/submission date, etc.}
 \rightheader{Running head}
 \shorttitle{Short title}
 \tabfnm{a}
 \tabfnt{a}{Note text}
 \thickline
 \title{Title}                          
 \volume{Volume, number, pages}

List of options to apa.cls

babel

Loads babel to support hyphenation and features for languages other than English. Desired languages should be listed as additional options after babel.

fignum

Effective in man mode, adds figure numbering to the figure pages. Makes it easier to refer to figures and I recommend it for the reviewers' copies, but for the original figures you need to have them printed without this and write the number with pencil on the back.

floatmark

Effective in man mode, inserts placeholders for floats in text (“Insert Figure X about here” – no longer required by APA)

helv

Effective in man mode, uses Helvetica as the base typeface

longtable

Only usable in man mode, loads longtable.sty if you really must use long tables in your manuscript.

noapacite

Prevents loading of apacite to allow use of BibLaTeX with the biblatex-apa style for citations and references. See the biblatex and biblatex-apa documentation.

nobf

Effective in man mode, turns off boldface in section headers for strict conformance to APA style.

nosf

Effective in man mode, neutralizes the \helvetica command. This is only included for backwards compatibility and should not be used any more since the \helvetica command is not supported now.

notab

Effective in jou mode, cancels the automatic stretching of tabular environments to the width of their enclosing float.

notimes

Effective in jou mode, cancels loading pslatex (or times) and uses computer modern fonts.

notxfonts

Effective in jou mode, ignores search for txfonts and tries to load pslatex (or times) in order to typeset with Times Roman.

tt

Effective in man mode, uses a typewriter base typeface

Possible problems