How Well Do You Know APA 7th Edition?
Test your APA formatting knowledge. From headings to references, see if you really know the rules, or if your paper needs a second look.
Free. No account required. Takes about 3 minutes.
What this quiz actually tests
Fifteen questions, each built around a rule that shows up in real student papers, and each with at least one answer that looks right but isn't. Here is where they come from.
Headings and structure
APA 7 defines five heading levels, each with its own alignment, weight, and capitalization. Two questions test whether you know what a Level 1 heading looks like on the page and whether you can skip a level when your outline feels thin. A skipped heading level is one of the fastest ways to make a well-argued paper read as disorganized.
In-text citations and quotes
Three questions cover the mechanics professors circle most: how many authors it takes before "et al." appears, where the period lands in a parenthetical citation, and the word count that turns an ordinary quote into a block quote. If you learned APA 6 first, at least one of these rules has changed out from under you.
The reference list
Four questions on the page most likely to cost points: how a DOI should be written, which way reference entries indent, how titles are capitalized, and what the page heading says. Title capitalization trips up more students than any other reference rule, because journals display titles one way and APA wants them written another.
Page setup and mechanics
The remaining six questions cover margins, line spacing, when numbers are written as words, whether student papers need a running head, how table titles are formatted, and which fonts APA 7 accepts. The font question surprises almost everyone who learned the old Times-New-Roman-only rule.
Frequently asked questions
Is the quiz free?
Yes. No account, no email required, and it takes about three minutes. You can share your score card at the end if you want to.
Does it cover student papers or professional papers?
Student papers, mainly. Where the two diverge, the quiz tests the student convention and the explanation notes the professional difference. The running head question is the classic example: APA 7 dropped the requirement for student papers, and plenty of templates never got the memo.
What happens after I answer a question?
You see the correct answer immediately, with a short explanation of the rule behind it. Wrong answers teach more than right ones here; the explanations are where the quiz earns its three minutes.
What if my score is rough?
Then the quiz did its job: you now have a list of exactly which rules to review before your next deadline. Our free APA cheat sheet covers every rule in the quiz, and StyleMyPaper can check a real draft against all of them at once.