Glad you find it helpful, Ciara! Yes, APA states you should indent the first line of every paragraph in your paper, including the first paragraph of a section or of the whole paper. The only exception is the abstract, which should not be indented.

Thanks for your kind words, Laney. I’m glad you find the site useful!

APA doesn’t specify any minimum length for a section. It’s even possible to have a lower-level heading immediately follow a heading of the level above it without any text in between (e.g., a level 2 heading immediately followed by a level 3 heading). If it’s a section in its own right, rather than one divided into smaller sections, it should obviously have at least some text, but I think one sentence would be fine.

First and foremost, this is a wonderful guide, and the content in the comments section is also quite beneficial for answering follow-on questions. Thank you, Scribbr team!

Question: how much text (if choosing to include) under any level of heading being used, is required? Can you write only one sentence, or is there a minimum requirement of one paragraph, if text is being included?

Thank you in advance!

Hi Nikki,

Generally, the body of a literature review (or any other kind of paper) is not given an explicit heading like “Body.” Instead, as you suggest, it’s usually split into several main topics (the three main topics you mention, in your case): these are your level 1 headings. Then you can use level 2 headings for subtopics within each of those, level 3 headings if necessary within those, and so on.

You can also find some further advice on writing a literature review here.

Do I need to have the title “summary” or “body” then the first topic(which is a sub-topic of the main one? I would love to have sub-topics under the 3 main subjects to be discussed. For example, if my main topic is “the impact of pandemic on youth mental health and well-being. I would love to have 3 main areas to be discuss such as consequences…., influencing factor and intervention. Under consequences i would have sub-topics eg. mental health etc.

How would I arrange that? Do i need to have the heading summary or body, then the 2 topic, then sub-topics?

Hi Georgina,

Yes, in APA Style it’s fine to have two headings (of different levels) placed adjacently with no intervening text.

Hi Janie,

It’s fine for a level 4 heading to have multiple paragraphs, yes. Just format the subsequent paragraphs in the normal way (no need to repeat the heading at the start of each paragraph or anything like that).