Everything You Need to Know About Appendices in Writing

Appendices, the plural of appendix, are sections of academic writing with supplemental information about the topic that doesn’t fit in the main text.

Appendices can include anything helpful to the reader but unnecessary to the topic’s progression; these may be charts, graphs, maps, videos, or even detailed explanations too lengthy for the body of the paper.

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The key word there iS NONESSENTIAL—any information that is essential to the topic should be included in the main body of the paper. In other words, your paper should make sense without the appendices.

The purpose of appendices is to provide supplemental information in a way that doesn’t distract the reader or derail the flow of the paper. It would be difficult for readers if, right in the middle of making your main points, you interrupted your paper to show pages of lists or charts that are slightly off topic.

What are appendices used for?

​They’re quite common in thesis papers and research papers, as well as published scientific works. If you’re writing a complex paper for an assignment, it might be a good idea to plan ahead and leave room for appendices in the research paper outline.

If you have only one appendix, you can call it simply Appendix and refer to it as such in text, e.g., (see Appendix).

How do you title appendices?

IF YOU HAVE SEVERAL APPENDICES YOU CAN

• label each appendix and they should be mentioned at least once in the main text of the paper.

• Each appendix also gets a distinct title that describes its content, which is separate from its label. So, for example, an appendix label might be Appendix C and its title, Interview Transcript.

How do you format an appendix page?

• Each new appendix begins on a separate page.

• Place the label centered and in bold at the top of the page.

• On a separate line, write the appendix’s title in title/headline case (Capitalize the First Letter of Each Major Word).

• if the appendix contains text, continue using indented paragraphs and follow the same format as in the rest of the paper.

• Otherwise, present the content in the same order it was mentioned in the body text.

• For multiple tables, figures, equations, etc., label them by number after the letter of the appendix, e.g., Table B2.

Where do appendices go?

​According to the APA publication Manual (Seventh Edition), appendices come after the reference list or bibliography. They should be the last sections of a paper.