APA formatting - a complete guide

In this article, I am going to give a complete guide on APA formatting. A college or university student must be aware of this style formatting already. But students still make major mistakes while formatting their final document. This guide will give you a step-by-step guide on how to format your document according to APA style. However, an expert essay writer can assist you in doing the formatting of your document

First of all, we will get to know what APA stands for? It stands for American Psychological Association.it is considered as an official style for the American Psychological Association. Students or researchers employ this style to convey their information about certain ideas in a consistent format. Many journals require the documents submitted to them should be in APA format.

Furthermore, students are accustomed to using many styles guides for their academic writing in college and university programs. It can be challenging to switch between different styles at times. Learning this new style can be made a little easier by mastering the basics and remembering a few crucial steps.

When I write my essay, one thing I make sure of is that I do all of the formatting while I'm writing it. This way, my documents appear to be well-organized, and I don't have to rush to finish them. The steps to follow while formatting in the APA style is as follows

Overall paper format

The format you are going to apply throughout the document that requires APA style formatting would follow the guidelines mentioned below

• You must include a page number on the top of every page left-aligned along with a header presenting the short title of your document

• Set the page margins 1 inch from all the sides

• all the text should be set at double spacing

• 0.5 inches indentation of all the paragraphs

• Font size should be 12 for times new roman, 11 for aria, and 11 for Georgia

Header

Every page in the APA style format has a header that includes the paper's short title as well as the page number. The page number is aligned to the right whereas the title is aligned to the left.

On the title page, the title is presented as following: “Running head: short title in all capital letters”. For the rest of the pages, it will be “short title in all capital letters” no need to add the word running head.

Title page

An APA-style formatted paper must include a title page. The document starts with a title page. The title page includes the following items

• Title of the topic in one to two lines

• Author name

• Author’s affiliation

• Authors note

APA style documents must require an abstract of the whole essay or paper. It is mostly required in professional papers and college student’s thesis or dissertations. It is considered as a summary of your paper. The length of an abstract varies from 200-250 words. It must follow the guideline such as

• It should be placed after the title page on a separate page

• It should be labeled as “Abstract” and must be bold and centered

• It should be a single paragraph

Keywords

Right below the abstract make a heading of keywords and mention 4-5 keywords related to your paper.

• The heading should be italicized, bold, and indented.

• The keywords should be separated by commas and written in lowercase characters.

Table of content

No specific guidelines are available for formatting the table of content however you should use the following general guidelines to create the table

• Requires a separate page to place the table of content

• It should be labeled as “Contents”. The label should be bold and centered

• Enlist the important headings along with page numbers.

• You can also generate the table automatically by using one of the options present on the Microsoft word

Citation

If you have cited any piece of information in your paper, you must properly cite it in the document (also known as an in-text citation) and also present the list of all the references at the end. This section includes all the sources that have been used in the paper.

In-text citation

APA style document instructs to cite the reference by mentioning the author's name followed by the date of publication. For instance, it would look like “(khan, 2016)” and be mentioned when the sentence or paragraph ends. This is called a normal citation.

When citing at the beginning it will be like “khan (2016)” followed by a comma and then the author will state further information. It is also known as a normative citation that is mentioned in the beginning or middle of the statement.

Different software can be used to cite the references such as Zotero, Mendeley, and endnote. However, you can take help from a essay writing service to do this part for you.

Reference page

The reference page should be well formatted following the guidelines mentioned below

• This section should be labeled as “References”. It should be bold and left-aligned

• The references should be enlisted in an alphabetical order

• Apply hanging indent to all the lists

• All the references should be left-aligned

An example of APA style referencing is

Khan, F. I., Husain, T., & Hejazi, R. (2004). An overview and analysis of site remediation technologies. Journal of Environmental Management, 71(2), 95–122.

Tables and figures

If your document contains tables and figures, they should be formatted accordingly as well. Both follow a similar format. You should mention the table or figure number along with their title or any additional information. The information added should be clear and concise. Label them with “Tables” and “Figures”. labels should be bold and left-aligned. keep your table simple, clear, and concise

If you think writing is not your cup of tea then you can hire an online essay writer.

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