If you are a student, you have probably been asked to format your essays or research papers using APA format. Using an APA format to edit your work can be a daunting task initially. Therefore, this blog shall attempt to simplify and demystify the process so you can cite in APA easily and without any fear.
What is APA?
APA stands for American Psychological Association, and it is the format typically used to cite research papers and documents in social and behavioral sciences. In other words, the APA format is the style guide used by the American Psychological Association to aid reading comprehension in social and behavioral sciences.
Leaving the daunting tasks of citations for later, let us first deal with APA formatting's simple steps.
Set page margins to 1 inch on all sides.
Double-space all text, including headings.
Indent the first line of every paragraph 0.5 inches.
Use Times New Roman font at 12pt.
Include a page number on every page—[You should include page numbers in the top right-hand corner of the header].
Include a running head in the header.
Running Header
If you are a student, your running head can be the page numbers in your document's top right-hand corner. If you are a student writing your dissertation or a professional, the running head is usually the document's title in capital letters aligned to the center or the left. It can be up to 50 characters long. If the title is very long, then the running head is different on the first page. The running head is the entire title on the first page and is a shorter version of the label on the subsequent pages.
Headings and Subheadings
APA formats have five possible levels of headings. In MS-word, we usually use 3 of these five possible levels. Heading one is used for the main title, while headers 2, 3, 4, and 5 are used for different subheadings levels. The number of headings or sub-headings used depends entirely on the paper's length and the necessity of these headings. Shorter pieces may not have any headings or sub-headings at all, so there is no need to worry if you have not included titles in the essay you had a format in APA. Most papers will probably not use all five levels of headings.
Some do's and don'ts for headings in APA:
Double-space all text, including the headings.
Use the same font for headings and body text (e.g., Times New Roman 12pt.).
Don't label headings with numbers or letters.
Don't add extra "enters" above or below headings.
Title Page/ Cover Page
A paper formatted in APA begins with a cover page or a title page. The guidelines for formatting a cover page in APA are different for student papers and professional papers. Both versions include the paper title and author's name. The student version consists of the course number and name, instructor name, and due date of the assignment, while the professional version includes an author note and running head.
For convenience, if you are a student formatting your paper in APA, your cover page should have the following pieces of information:
Paper title
Author name
Department and university name
Course number and name
Instructor name
Due date of the assignment
Abstract
An abstract is a summary of your paper. It is usually between 150-250 words long. The abstract comes right after the title page. Right below the heading "Abstract," you might wish to include 3-5 keywords that will help people find your paper. Unlike normal paragraphs, the contents of the abstract begin right after the heading without any hanging indent.
Table of Contents
APA does not have particular guidelines for formatting a table of contents. Therefore, it is okay if you stick to the general formatting criteria for your table of contents. Place your table of contents on a separate page, in-between the abstract and the introduction. To generate a table of contents in word, click update heading styles on the home page and select Heading 1, heading 2, and so on as required. Then you can quickly generate the table of contents by clicking on the generate table of contents in the references tab on MS-word.
References
An APA reference page is placed after the main body of the paper, before the appendices. The reference page must include all the sources used in in-text citations. A reference page is usually auto-created by google docs, MS-word, or any online citation generator you used to keep a record of all your in-text citations. The following points are essential to keep in mind while creating a references page:
Place the section label "References" in bold at the top of the page (centered).
Invert the author's name; that is, the author's last name should come before their first name.
Order the references alphabetically according to the first letter of the author's last name.
Double-space all text.
Apply a hanging indent of 0.5 inches.
Omit suffixes (e.g., "Jr.") and titles (e.g., "Ph.D." or "Dr."), and only specify the year of publication, not the day and month.
Parenthetical vs. narrative citations
The in-text citation can be placed in parentheses or naturally integrated into a sentence.
Parenthetical: There is a correlation between social media usage and anxiety symptoms in teenagers (Parker, 2019).
Narrative: Parker (2019) found a correlation between social media usage and anxiety symptoms in teenagers.
If a work has two authors, separate their names with an ampersand (&) in a parenthetical citation or "and" in a narrative citation. If there are three or more authors, only include the first author's last name followed by "et al.," meaning "and others."
Their abbreviations know as group authors (e.g., CDC), are written in full the first time and are abbreviated in subsequent citations.
These cover the basics of formatting your paper in APA. It isn't as hard as it sounds, right? Break it down, and don't stress about it; you'll get the hang of it soon enough. I hope this helps!
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