In APA style, a figure is any representation of information that does not use rows and columns (e.g., a line graph, map, or photograph).

Keep the following in mind when including a figure in your capstone manuscript:

• The figure number, in bold text, belongs above the figure, flush left.
• The figure title belongs one double-spaced line below the figure number. The title should be in title case and italics. The title is double-spaced unless it is more than one line long (in which case, it is single-spaced).
• Color can be used in the figure if it is necessary for understanding the material. See APA 7, Section 7.26 for guidelines.
• Notes can appear below the figure to describe the contents of the figure that cannot be understood from the figure title (e.g., definitions of abbreviations, explanations of shading, and citations).
• If you are using data from a source in your figure, be sure to cite the source underneath the figure description. See our page on Citing Sources for Tables and Figures for examples.

For more on figures, see APA 7, Sections 7.22-7.36. (Note that APA 6 recommend significantly different formatting of the figure number and title.)

In this example, the writer created the figure using statistics from a journal article.

Figure 3

Clergy Demographics of Study Participants

Note. From “Predicting the Mental Health Literacy of Clergy: An Informational Resource for Counselors,” by J. D. Vermaas, J. Green, M. Haley, and L. Haddock, 2017, Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 39(3), p. 231.

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The following is an example of a figure the writer created from their own original data.

Figure 4

Number of Hours of Television Watched Per Week by Age Group