APA PowerPoint template

There is no single official PPT file

APA Style, published by the American Psychological Association, specifies how scholarly papers look and how sources are cited. It does not publish one official PowerPoint template that every course must use. Searches for an APA PPT template, a PowerPoint APA format template, or an APA style PowerPoint template are people trying to map paper rules onto slides. Your instructor's sheet wins when it conflicts with a generic file from the internet.

What you can standardize is the scholarly layer: a title slide with the paper's identifying lines, a short citation when a frame uses someone else's idea, and a final reference slide in APA form. The visual theme (colors, photo, footer logo) is not an APA rule. Keep type large enough to read from a seat. A useful floor for body text on a slide is around 18 points or larger. That is a presentation practice, not a line in the manual.

What the title slide should carry

APA's student title page for a paper includes the title, the author, the affiliation, the course, the instructor, and the due date. A student talk can put those on the first slide in that order, in plain type, without a running head. Professional papers use a different title page (no course line). If you are not a student in a course, drop the course and instructor lines and keep title, author, and affiliation.

The title is in title case, bold, and centered on a paper. On a slide, centered bold title case is a fair match. Do not add 'Running head:' on a slide. Do not shrink the author block to 10 points so a stock photo can fill the frame. The identifying text is the point of this slide.

Citations and the reference slide

When a slide uses a fact or a sentence from a source, put a parenthetical citation on that slide: author and year, the same way you would in a paragraph. A quotation also needs a page or paragraph number when the source has one. The last slide, or the last few, lists the full references. APA reference examples (author, date, title, source) are on the APA Style site linked below. Hang the references. Do not center them, and do not switch to a new citation style on the last slide only.

Charts and images need credit too. If you did not make the figure, the slide should say where it came from. After the deck is done, export a PDF if the assignment asks for one. The click path for a Google Slides file is the same idea as Google Doc to PDF: File, then Download, then PDF. PowerPoint uses File, Save a Copy or Export.

Steps

1. Make the title slide. Title, your name, affiliation, and, for a course, the course name, instructor, and due date. Match the paper title page your assignment asked for.
2. One claim per content slide. Write the claim as the slide title. Put the evidence under it. Add an author-year citation on any slide that uses a source.
3. Add the reference slide. List each cited work in APA reference form, hanging indent if the editor allows it. Include only works you cited.
4. Check type size and export. Body text should stay large enough to read in the room. Export PDF or PPTX as the assignment requires, then open the file once before you send it.