The sixth edition APA style guide gives us guidelines for how to format figures
and tables. We are going to learn how tables and figures are to be labeled and
titled for publication or for a class paper. Now, they're different from each
other and those horizontal lines on the table are called "rules". Of course, there
are some rules about rules. Tables are a visual display of data. They can show
lots of data in a little space. The lines on the table
are called "rules". At a minimum, you need one rule across the width of the top of
the table and one rule across the width of the bottom of the table. Typically,
however, you will see a third rule across the width of the first row of the table.
There are never any vertical lines in APA tables, and as with all text in an
APA style document, the font is black. Times New Roman is preferred and you
should use black lines for your rules. Color is never used in APA style.
All graphs, charts, histograms, drawings, sketches of an apparatus, pictures, bar
napkin scrawls... any other visual depiction is called a "figure." Figures
include any visual depiction that is not a table. Both tables and figures are
consecutively numbered, but tables and figures are numbered independently.
So you may have Table 1, Table 2, Figure 1, then Table 3, Figure 2, etc. When labeling
tables in APA style, the label for a table goes above the table. Start with a
capital T "Table" and then the table number. There is no
period following the table number. Now create a new line. The title of the table
is in title case. All words are capitalized except for unimportant words
like "a", "and", and "the." Put the title of the table in italics. The title is
left-justified, meaning that it is hard against the left margin, not centered or
right-justified, and it does not end with a period. If the title of the table
extends to a second line, that line is not indented. When labeling figures in
APA style, the label for the figure goes below the figure. Underneath your figure
type capital-F "Figure" and then the figure number, followed by a period.
The figure number and period are all in italics. Leave one space and on the same
line continue by typing the title of the figure in sentence case. Only the first
word and any proper nouns are capitalized. As with tables, the title of
the figure is left-justified and does not end with a period. Compare the figure
and the table here and notice the difference in the formatting between them.
If you plan to use a figure from SPSS for a thesis, dissertation, or
publication, there are some additional tricks that you should know about
formatting figures. As a rule, SPSS output is never in APA style. It always requires
some degree of formatting. For graphs especially, the SPSS defaults must be
changed to conform to APA style.
Now you know how to label and title both tables and figures for publication or
class papers. If you want to learn more about creating tables in APA style,
I have another video that covers that topic in depth.