APA Tables and Figures: The Formatting Rules Your Committee Checks First

Tables and figures are where a lot of otherwise well-formatted dissertations fall apart. The rules are specific, they differ from what most students learned in undergraduate courses, and the errors are immediately visible to anyone who has reviewed many dissertations. Getting your tables and figures right is one of the fastest ways to signal to your committee that your document is ready for serious review.

Mention Before Placement

Every table and figure must be mentioned in the text before it appears in the document. This is not optional and it determines the numbering. If you mention Table 3 before Table 2 in your running text, you have numbered them incorrectly. Go through your document and verify that every table and figure is referenced in the paragraph immediately before it appears, and that the numbering follows the order of mention.

Font and Size

Tables and figures must use the same font type and size as the rest of your document. If your dissertation uses 12-point Times New Roman, your tables use 12-point Times New Roman. Using a smaller font to fit more information into a table is a common workaround that APA does not permit.

Table Titles and Figure Captions

Table titles appear above the table. They are bold, written in sentence case, and placed on the line immediately above the table with no blank line between the title and the table. Figure captions appear below the figure. They begin with the figure label in bold, such as "Figure 1," followed by the caption in plain text.

Borders

APA tables use only horizontal borders. The top and bottom of the table have borders, as does the line separating the header row from the data. Vertical borders and internal horizontal borders between data rows are not used in APA style. If you created your tables using the default Word table style, you almost certainly have borders that need to be removed.

Ampersands in Tables

Write out "and" in table headers and titles rather than using an ampersand. Ampersands in APA are reserved for parenthetical citations and reference entries.

Landscape Formatting

If a table is too wide to fit within your standard margins in portrait orientation, it may require landscape formatting. A single landscape page within an otherwise portrait document is acceptable in APA format. The page numbers and margins still apply in landscape orientation.