APA format is the paper format prescribed by the American Psychological Association. The research paper format is such that it can be used by students and teachers to compose decent papers while giving them the opportunity to express themselves through their papers. In order for these objectives to be achieved, the APA has set some guidelines.
To begin with, research scholars would do well to consider that the APA has been designed keeping in mind the standard of the higher levels in the academia. That basically leaves out middle school students who would have been worrying about the paper without an apparent cause. That is, unless they have been asked to abide by the format.
Here are a few guidelines that you can consider while writing an essay in APA format.
- Margin: There are some instructions that might ask scholars to follow a different route. But unless there is an express instruction, the APA format prescribes a margin of one inch throughout the paper.
- Line Spacing: This is one part of APA writing that most students do not understand very well. But this should be followed very closely. The default spacing in is 1.15. It should be reset to a No Spacing option. That makes it easy for students when they would later want to select the entire text and take the spacing to 2.0. If that is not done, an extra space gets added by default and that can create an issue later. This should be followed unless there is a specific instruction declares it void.
- Title Page: The APA format does not expressly have a provision for a title page. You can ask the course instructor for directions on the title page. You can also check your course paper guidelines that talk about the title page. The title page should start at the first page of the essay and students are generally advised to start with a running header. These inclusions must be made at the header section of the page and not the first line, as many students tend to do. The upper right corner of the page should be reserved for the page number.
- Quotations: Any quotations that you make from a foreign text and if it is lesser than 40 words in length, has to be included within quotation marks. To determine the word count, all words in the quotations should be counted including the articles and prepositions. Always use this form in your paper written in the APA format.