APA Style margins are 1″ all the way around. Students often ask about the top margin, why isn’t the running head one inch from the edge of the paper? The APA manual never describes where the running head, which is a document header, should be placed in relation to the top margin so it is no wonder that people ask this question.

A header, by definition, is inside of the margin. The body of the paper starts one inch down from the top edge of the document but the APA running head is inside of that space between the body of the APA Style document and the top edge of the document.

Top APA Margin with Running Head inside of Margin

For further reading see:

• Scroll to bottom of this document and look for “Dear Marginal, think of it this way…”
  http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/running-heads/
• ┬áLook for “What is a header” in this document:
  http://pediaa.com/difference-between-header-and-footer/

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