Purdue OWL instructional material

In high school I had a specific English teacher that always had the class write essays in APA format. She first introduced this writing style to the class and I in ninth grade. She would always mention that one day we would need to know this to complete college papers. I somewhat believed her because of course they always say you "need" to learn certain material for the real world. So in my first year of college we didn't use APA formatting at all. Needless to say the next year we did, and I was sort of shocked. A lot of my classmates were clueless as to what APA formatting was. Many had heard of it but never used it before. In high school my English teacher introduced us to the Purdue OWL website. This is how I learned most of what I know on APA formatting. It gives you step by step instructions, of course your professor may want things a certain way. 

Purdue OWL also gives you MLA formatting instructions. Which is what most people I know are accustomed to using. In general I think this website is a great tool to use. It is free and certainly very handy. I have used it plenty of times and it never fails to rescue me.