Paper Formatting
General Formatting
Assignments at The Seattle School are to be formatted in accordance with standards of APA or Chicago style for student papers unless otherwise designated by the professor.
- Assignments are to be typed and formatted for 8 1/2 x 11 letter size document
- Use 12-point serif font such as Times New Roman or 11-point sans serif font, such as Arial
- Use 1-inch margins on all sides
- Text should be double-spaced
- Include a title page according to student paper formats for APA & Chicago styles
- Place page number in upper right corner
- Upload assignments as .pdf or .doc files and save according to syllabi requirements, ex: “lastname.firstname.assignmentname”
Page Numbers
Chicago Turabian Style has particular guidance about page numbers, as opposed to APA style, which is fairly straightforward. This guidance only comes into play if you are writing a paper that has an abstract, a table of contents, or other front matter besides the title page. If you are writing a Turabian-style paper that only includes a title page, simply start the numbering at 1 on the first page of text and include no page number on the title page.
If your assignment description calls for an abstract or table of contents, Chicago Turabian Style requires that the front matter be numbered with Roman numerals (e.g., ii, iii, iv, etc.). Note that no numeral should appear on the title page, although it technically counts as page i (see Section A.2.1 of the Turabian manual). The first page of full text after the front matter should begin with the typical Arabic numeral 1.
Depending on what word processing software you are using, the method for following Turabian’s pagination guidance differs. For example, Google Docs does not currently support Roman numeral pagination. Students who use this program should ask their instructors for guidance on how to handle pagination. Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer both support Roman numerals.
Guides to setting up pagination in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and LibreOffice Writer can be found below:
Use headers, footers, page numbers & footnotes – Google Docs Editors Help, accessed 07/08/2026 [Archived]
Customize page numbers and their formats in different Word document sections – Microsoft Support, accessed 07/08/2026 [Archived]
Page Numbers – LibreOffice 26.2 Help, accessed 07/08/2026 [Archived]
Style Specific Resources
Paper format in APA and Sample Papers[Archived]