Here is some advice regarding your APA style papers based on the common "newbie" errors that I have seen.

• The cover sheet should be created as a separate document from the manuscript. The cover sheet needs no page number. The manuscript begins with the title page which must be numbered 1. The abstract (when you do one) must be a new page, and numbered 2. The body of the paper must begin on a new page numbered 3.
• Don't forget to get some paper clips.
• Write as if you were the only researcher who conducted the study. But use the data that everyone collected. Write as if you collected all of it.
• In APA style, you write in the past tense. e.g., "The dependent variable was height." Not "The dependent variable is height".
  
  You only use present tense occasionally in the discussion section to talk about general principles that apply all the time. e.g., Rather than saying "This study showed that height was related to gender.", you can say "This study showed that height is related to gender." Notice that "This study showed..." is past tense because the study was already conducted. But you say "height is related", not "height was related", because you believe that what the study showed will always be true.
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• Don't use a double space after a period.
• Don't explain details of the procedure that make no difference to the reader. For example, the reader doesn't care whether you used Excel to record the data or SPSS to analyze it. Which analysis you did is important (e.g., independent t test versus paired t test). But the fact that you used a certain menu choice in a certain program is way too much detail.
• When speaking of participants, speak of them in the plural. This allows you to use the non-gender-specific "they", rather than "he or she".
• Use left justification, not full justification (see me if you don't know what justification is, or don't know how to set it using your word processor).
  
• Use parallel structure. For example, this sentence is not parallel structure:
  
  "The mean height for the 220 females was 66 inches, and 70 inches for the 212 males."
  
  This is parallel structure:
  
  "The mean height was 66 inches for the 220 females and 70 inches for the 212 males." (notice, no comma is necessary)
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• Finally, FOLLOW THE MODEL PAPERS AND INSTRUCTIONS ON THE WEB. Many errors could have been avoided by doing this.

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