q&a format essay

How do you format a question and answer in APA?

To format questions and answers in APA format :

• Begin the question on a new line and type number 1 followed by a period. 
• Times New Roman font, 12 point size
• Calibri font, 11 point size
• Arial font, 11 point size
• Georgia font, 11 point size
• Lucida Sans Unicode font, 10 point size
• Computer Modern font, 10 point size
• Use double spacing and one inch margins.
• Separate the answer from the question by beginning the answer on a new line.
• Continue to use the same format for fonts and spacing for the whole document.
• Continue the list of questions on a new line and align the number 2 under the 1.

If the Instructor has specific instructions about bold type, follow their preference, but APA does not require it.

Example in APA format :

1.   What year was slavery abolished in America?

Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865 , although many states abolished slavery for themselves at  various dates between 1777 and 1864 .

Thank you for using ASK US.  For more information, please contact your Baker librarians .

• Last Updated May 19, 2022
• Views 321614
• Answered By Baker Librarians

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Comments (11)

• My professor says the question should be bold and the answer should be indented. by James on Jan 05, 2017
• I have seen some just have a Q. With the question And others say 1.and the question (both are in bold) what is the right way? by Brenda Ramirez on Feb 01, 2018
• Begin your question on a new line and type number 1 followed by a period. Type the discussion question in Times New Roman font, 12 point size- do not bold. Please let us know if you have any further questions! by Patrick Mullane on Feb 05, 2018
• If you are one of 4 people doing a case analysis together, do you state an introduction to your question? by Veronica on Feb 27, 2018
• Depending on what your Instructor/Professor assigned, a short introduction would make the case analysis easier for your reader to understand. by ASK US Librarian on Feb 28, 2018
• How do you format any extra paragraphs when using APA question/answer format? ie. The question, when written out in the paper isn't indented, and the follow up paragraph/answer isn't indented, but if your answer is multiple paragraphs, are those paragraphs indented? Thanks! by Mark on Sep 19, 2018
• Since the question/answer is double spaced, there should be an empty line between paragraphs, but the second paragraph does not need to be indented. (Your Instructor/Professor may have a different opinion and, as always, defer to their preference.) by ASK US Librarian on Oct 10, 2018
• When writing a question and answer case study should there be headings? by Tara on Oct 05, 2019
• The APA Help guide has a Sample Paper with headings. https://guides.baker.edu/apahelp by ASK US Librarian on Oct 23, 2019
• Hi, for question/answer type assignments, are introduction and conclusions necessary? Thank you by A. Sellers on Mar 31, 2020
• Always defer to what the Professor/Instructor assigned, but APA format does call for an Introduction and Conclusion in a research paper. See guides.baker.edu/apahelp for a Sample Paper. Since your assignment is not a research paper, the Instructor may not require those sections. by ASK US Librarian on Apr 01, 2020

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How do I format a Q and A in MLA style?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook . For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook .

Practices for formatting a Q and A vary. The  Style Center includes some examples of the MLA’s practice. See, for instance, our posts on digital literacy and on teaching research skills.

Seven Steps to Writing a Q&A

by Kelli Matthews | Apr 10, 2015 | AHPR Blog

A Q&A is one of the simplest methods of sharing an interview with an audience. It is essentially an edited transcript of an interview that includes both the interviewer’s direct questions and the interviewee’s response in written format. Unlike feature stories, Q&As have little room for “fluff.” They tell the message of your interviewee without a narrative story. Many people prefer Q&As because of their easy readability and to-the-point structure. Due to the simplistic nature of the Q&A, it is important to focus on the presentation of the final product. Here are seven simple tips to consider when writing a Q&A:

• Think about the final product before conducting the interview. This includes brainstorming questions that call for an open-ended response. It is very hard to formulate a good Q&A with simple “yes” or “no” questions. For example, the question “Do you like dogs?” doesn’t leave much room for an explanation on the subject. Consider changing it to, “What do you like most about dogs?” to give the interviewee a chance to elaborate on the topic.
• Type out the entire transcript before editing. This is the easiest way to begin formatting the final piece. Listen to the interview and type out word-for-word the questions you asked and the responses you received. This will help you figure out the best way to arrange the results.
• Arrange your questions and answers in an order that makes sense. The goal here is to make the piece as easy to navigate as possible. Try your best to keep your questions in a good flowing order by not jumping around topics. It should all flow as a typical conversation would.
• Feel free to edit what your interviewee says without changing their meaning. Most people don’t speak how we professionally write. It’s okay to edit out your interviewee’s “ums,” “uhs,” and pauses, as long as you don’t change the meaning of their words.
• Re-listen to your interview after completing your Q&A write up. This will ensure that you haven’t missed any important information that could benefit the piece. Perhaps after re-listening, you realize one of the questions you’ve included in the written version doesn’t necessarily pertain to the interview as a whole. In this step, delete any unnecessary questions and answers.
• Formatting is key. It may seem simple, but formatting in a Q&A is essential. It’s important to keep your formatting consistent. For example, you may choose to format your Q&A like this:

Q: Why is John Mitchell your favorite professor in the School of Journalism?

A: John gives amazing feedback and really cares about his students.

This approach uses the letters “Q” and “A” in boldface to make it clear to the reader which text is the question and which is the answer. This is a common technique in Q&As, however there are several approaches you can take. For example:

Why do you think Kathryn Kuttis deserved to win the Emerald’s “Best Professor” award?

She is the type of educator that makes students want to attend class. Her humor is infectious and she is so knowledgeable about PR!

The reader will be able to tell apart the questions and answers by referring to the bold type and regular type font. Whichever way you choose to format is completely up to you. What matters most is making sure your decision is consistent throughout the entire piece to avoid any confusion on who is speaking.

• Include more than just dialogue. An introduction paragraph is a great way to include background on your interviewee in your own voice. This is where you can explain who your Q&A features, why they are important and what the reader can expect to learn from the piece. Conclusion paragraphs are another way to include your own voice and tie the piece together, telling the reader why the piece is relevant.

Why write a Q&A? Q&As are an amazing way to appeal to your audience. They are typically more informative than feature stories, particularly when there is jargon to be explained. When you’re trying to be simple and to the point, or if you’re on a tight deadline, Q&As are great presentations of interviews. Feature stories focus more on narrative and are usually more human-interest pieces. Both forms of writing present something beneficial, but they also have their times and places. The next time you find yourself writing a Q&A, be sure to follow these tips for a flawless finished product!

Here are some great examples of finished Q&A pieces:

Q&A: Säad Rafi, CEO of the Toronto Pan Am Games, on leading the most polarizing event since the G20

Q&A: The Miami Marine Stadium’s Architect on Its Past and Future

Women in Business Q&A: Michele Promaulayko, Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo Health

Julia Zinsmeister Account Executive – Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship

Julia Zinsmeister is an Account Executive on the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship team. She is a junior at the University of Oregon majoring in Public Relations and minoring in German. Interested in international relations, Julia hopes to combine her two fields of study and travel the world as a PR professional. She is excited to see where her studies take her after her anticipated graduation in June 2016.

Twitter: @juliazins

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/zinsmeisterjulia

Purdue Online Writing Lab College of Liberal Arts

MLA Formatting and Style Guide

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The following overview should help you better understand how to cite sources using MLA  9 th edition, including how to format the Works Cited page and in-text citations.

Please use the example at the bottom of this page to cite the Purdue OWL in MLA. See also our MLA vidcast series on the Purdue OWL YouTube Channel .

Creating a Works Cited list using the ninth edition

MLA is a style of documentation that may be applied to many different types of writing. Since texts have become increasingly digital, and the same document may often be found in several different sources, following a set of rigid rules no longer suffices.

Thus, the current system is based on a few guiding principles, rather than an extensive list of specific rules. While the handbook still describes how to cite sources, it is organized according to the process of documentation, rather than by the sources themselves. This gives writers a flexible method that is near-universally applicable.

Once you are familiar with the method, you can use it to document any type of source, for any type of paper, in any field.

Here is an overview of the process:

When deciding how to cite your source, start by consulting the list of core elements. These are the general pieces of information that MLA suggests including in each Works Cited entry. In your citation, the elements should be listed in the following order:

• Title of source.
• Title of container,
• Other contributors,
• Publication date,

Each element should be followed by the corresponding punctuation mark shown above. Earlier editions of the handbook included the place of publication and required different punctuation (such as journal editions in parentheses and colons after issue numbers) depending on the type of source. In the current version, punctuation is simpler (only commas and periods separate the elements), and information about the source is kept to the basics.

Begin the entry with the author’s last name, followed by a comma and the rest of the name, as presented in the work. End this element with a period.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.

Title of source

The title of the source should follow the author’s name. Depending upon the type of source, it should be listed in italics or quotation marks.

A book should be in italics:

Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House . MacMurray, 1999.

An individual webpage should be in quotation marks. The name of the parent website, which MLA treats as a "container," should follow in italics:

Lundman, Susan. "How to Make Vegetarian Chili." eHow, www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html.*

A periodical (journal, magazine, newspaper) article should be in quotation marks:

Bagchi, Alaknanda. "Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi's Bashai Tudu." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature , vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41-50.

A song or piece of music on an album should be in quotation marks. The name of the album should then follow in italics:

Beyoncé. "Pray You Catch Me." Lemonade, Parkwood Entertainment, 2016, www.beyonce.com/album/lemonade-visual-album/.

*The MLA handbook recommends including URLs when citing online sources. For more information, see the “Optional Elements” section below.

Title of container

The eighth edition of the MLA handbook introduced what are referred to as "containers," which are the larger wholes in which the source is located. For example, if you want to cite a poem that is listed in a collection of poems, the individual poem is the source, while the larger collection is the container. The title of the container is usually italicized and followed by a comma, since the information that follows next describes the container.

Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl." The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff, Vintage, 1994, pp. 306-07.

The container may also be a television series, which is made up of episodes.

“94 Meetings.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, performance by Amy Poehler, season 2, episode 21, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2010.

The container may also be a website, which contains articles, postings, and other works.

Wise, DeWanda. “Why TV Shows Make Me Feel Less Alone.”  NAMI,  31 May 2019,  www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/May-2019/How-TV-Shows-Make-Me-Feel-Less-Alone . Accessed 3 June 2019.

In some cases, a container might be within a larger container. You might have read a book of short stories on Google Books , or watched a television series on Netflix . You might have found the electronic version of a journal on JSTOR. It is important to cite these containers within containers so that your readers can find the exact source that you used.

“94 Meetings.” Parks and Recreation , season 2, episode 21, NBC , 29 Apr. 2010. Netflix, www.netflix.com/watch/70152031?trackId=200256157&tctx=0%2C20%2C0974d361-27cd-44de-9c2a-2d9d868b9f64-12120962.

Langhamer, Claire. “Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England.” Historical Journal , vol. 50, no. 1, 2007, pp. 173-96. ProQuest, doi:10.1017/S0018246X06005966. Accessed 27 May 2009.

Other contributors

In addition to the author, there may be other contributors to the source who should be credited, such as editors, illustrators, translators, etc. If their contributions are relevant to your research, or necessary to identify the source, include their names in your documentation.

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard , Vintage-Random House, 1988.

Woolf, Virginia. Jacob’s Room . Annotated and with an introduction by Vara Neverow, Harcourt, Inc., 2008.

If a source is listed as an edition or version of a work, include it in your citation.

The Bible . Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2004.

If a source is part of a numbered sequence, such as a multi-volume book or journal with both volume and issue numbers, those numbers must be listed in your citation.

Dolby, Nadine. “Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions and Future Directions.” Social Work and Society: The International Online-Only Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/60/362. Accessed 20 May 2009.

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria. Translated by H. E. Butler, vol. 2, Loeb-Harvard UP, 1980.

The publisher produces or distributes the source to the public. If there is more than one publisher, and they are all relevant to your research, list them in your citation, separated by a forward slash (/).

Klee, Paul. Twittering Machine. 1922. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Artchive, www.artchive.com/artchive/K/klee/twittering_machine.jpg.html. Accessed May 2006.

Women's Health: Problems of the Digestive System . American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2006.

Daniels, Greg and Michael Schur, creators. Parks and Recreation . Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2015.

Note : The publisher’s name need not be included in the following sources: periodicals, works published by their author or editor, websites whose titles are the same name as their publisher, websites that make works available but do not actually publish them (such as  YouTube ,  WordPress , or  JSTOR ).

Publication date

The same source may have been published on more than one date, such as an online version of an original source. For example, a television series might have aired on a broadcast network on one date, but released on  Netflix  on a different date. When the source has more than one date, it is sufficient to use the date that is most relevant to your writing. If you’re unsure about which date to use, go with the date of the source’s original publication.

In the following example, Mutant Enemy is the primary production company, and “Hush” was released in 1999. Below is a general citation for this television episode:

“Hush.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer , created by Joss Whedon, performance by Sarah Michelle Gellar, season 4, Mutant Enemy, 1999 .

However, if you are discussing, for example, the historical context in which the episode originally aired, you should cite the full date. Because you are specifying the date of airing, you would then use WB Television Network (rather than Mutant Enemy), because it was the network (rather than the production company) that aired the episode on the date you’re citing.

“Hush.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon, performance by Sarah Michelle Gellar, season 4, episode 10, WB Television Network, 14 Dec. 1999 .

You should be as specific as possible in identifying a work’s location.

An essay in a book or an article in a journal should include page numbers.

Adiche, Chimamanda Ngozi. “On Monday of Last Week.” The Thing around Your Neck, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, pp. 74-94 .

The location of an online work should include a URL.  Remove any "http://" or "https://" tag from the beginning of the URL.

Wheelis, Mark. "Investigating Disease Outbreaks Under a Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention." Emerging Infectious Diseases , vol. 6, no. 6, 2000, pp. 595-600, wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/6/00-0607_article. Accessed 8 Feb. 2009.

When citing a physical object that you experienced firsthand, identify the place of location.

Matisse, Henri. The Swimming Pool. 1952, Museum of Modern Art, New York .

Optional elements

The ninth edition is designed to be as streamlined as possible. The author should include any information that helps readers easily identify the source, without including unnecessary information that may be distracting. The following is a list of optional elements that can be included in a documented source at the writer’s discretion.

Date of original publication:

If a source has been published on more than one date, the writer may want to include both dates if it will provide the reader with necessary or helpful information.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. 1984. Perennial-Harper, 1993.

City of publication:

The seventh edition handbook required the city in which a publisher is located, but the eighth edition states that this is only necessary in particular instances, such as in a work published before 1900. Since pre-1900 works were usually associated with the city in which they were published, your documentation may substitute the city name for the publisher’s name.

Thoreau, Henry David. Excursions . Boston, 1863.

Date of access:

When you cite an online source, the MLA Handbook recommends including a date of access on which you accessed the material, since an online work may change or move at any time.

Bernstein, Mark. "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web." A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites, 16 Aug. 2002, alistapart.com/article/writeliving. Accessed 4 May 2009.

As mentioned above, while the MLA handbook recommends including URLs when you cite online sources, you should always check with your instructor or editor and include URLs at their discretion.

A DOI, or digital object identifier, is a series of digits and letters that leads to the location of an online source. Articles in journals are often assigned DOIs to ensure that the source is locatable, even if the URL changes. If your source is listed with a DOI, use that instead of a URL.

Alonso, Alvaro, and Julio A. Camargo. "Toxicity of Nitrite to Three Species of Freshwater Invertebrates." Environmental Toxicology , vol. 21, no. 1, 3 Feb. 2006, pp. 90-94. Wiley Online Library, doi: 10.1002/tox.20155.

Creating in-text citations using the previous (eighth) edition

Although the MLA handbook is currently in its ninth edition, some information about citing in the text using the older (eighth) edition is being retained. The in-text citation is a brief reference within your text that indicates the source you consulted. It should properly attribute any ideas, paraphrases, or direct quotations to your source, and should direct readers to the entry in the Works Cited list. For the most part, an in-text citation is the  author’s name and the page number (or just the page number, if the author is named in the sentence) in parentheses :

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

Again, your goal is to attribute your source and provide a reference without interrupting your text. Your readers should be able to follow the flow of your argument without becoming distracted by extra information.

How to Cite the Purdue OWL in MLA

Entire Website

The Purdue OWL . Purdue U Writing Lab, 2019.

Individual Resources

Contributors' names. "Title of Resource." The Purdue OWL , Purdue U Writing Lab, Last edited date.

The new OWL no longer lists most pages' authors or publication dates. Thus, in most cases, citations will begin with the title of the resource, rather than the developer's name.

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL, Purdue U Writing Lab. Accessed 18 Jun. 2018.