Formatting an essay is one of the hardest things an essay writer has to do after actually writing one. With so many formats out there, it's only natural for students, or any newbie to formatting, to get instantly overwhelmed.
However, there is no reason to let that stop you from learning. Below are some great guidelines to help you out with the APA format. And hopefully, by the time you are done reading, you will have gained some great insight into formatting your essay.
What is APA?
The American Psychological Association or APA style is a widely used style for citing sources in the fields relating to social sciences. It, in turn, has an entire manual that gives a wide range of examples and rules to follow while working with the format. In addition, the manual covers various things like in-text citations, research papers, endnotes / footnotes, and, naturally, the reference page.
The Guidelines Await
While the format in discussion has information regarding every aspect of writing, we will only be discussing the general guidelines down below. So, when you sit down to write your essay, be sure to go through them, like I do when I have to write my paper . In addition, it is important not to forget that your entire essay needs to follow these guidelines and not just one page of it.
- The page margins of your essay document need to be 1 inch all around.
- The text needs to be double spaced throughout your essay, a rule that also extends to your headings as well.
- The starting line of each paragraph should have its indent. As such, the indent should be around a half-inch from the left. A pro tip in this regard is to just press the "Tab" key on your keyboard once. It saves you the trouble of repeatedly pressing the spacebar five times.
- The font you use in your essay should be legible, appealing to the eyes and facilitating readability. As such, you may use the Times New Roman, Arial, or Georgia font. The font size of the first being 12 points, while in the other two, you should use an 11 point font size.
If you think that all of this is above you, do not worry because you can find ample help online. However, properly formatting an essay is not everyone's forte, so do not go for the cheapest essay writing service out there. So, just to be safe, it would not hurt to learn the ins and outs of formatting an essay; further guidelines for which are as follows:
- Furthermore, each page of your essay needs to have a page number.
- The references at the end of your document need to be in alphabetical order. Accordingly, you can use the alphabets of the last name of a particular work's first author to organize your references.
- Also, note that in case the author is unknown, you can still organize the reference. All you have to do is write the title of the article if the author is unknown.
- Your essay also needs to have page headers throughout. The header must contain the page number in the top right-hand corner when it comes to student essays. Meanwhile, when it comes to professional essays, a running head is also included.
- The running head of your essay is the title of your essay written in capital letters. It should be left-aligned and be no longer than 50 characters. But in case you have a long title for your essay, just use an abridged version of it.
And voila! That is all you need to know to get started on formatting your paper. However, if you hit a snag, be sure to look for some help from a paper writing service .
Useful Resources:
Most common types of Narrative Essays
0 kommentar(er)
