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Helpful Guidelines On How To Write APA Style Research Paper

APA writing style developed for a long time and went through a lot of changes. As a result of the long and hard work on the main guidelines appeared the APA manual, which currently brings trouble to a lot of students. If you do not want to get lost among the hundreds of rules of APA, check out our basic guidelines.

  • Margins. Margins on each side of the paper (left, right, top and bottom) shall measure 1 inch.
  • Type and size of font. The paper shall be typed in Times New Roman, 12pt.
  • Spacing. Students shall use double spacing for all of the chapters to follow a correct APA format.
  • Punctuation. One space shall be put after punctuation marks within sentences (commas, colons, semicolons) and two spaces after the punctuation mark that finishes a sentence.
  • Alignment of text. The text must be aligned to the left, leaving the right margin uneven.
  • Running heads. Short titles, consisting of not more than 50 symbols with punctuation and spacing, aligned to the left. Are the must for papers that will actually go into publishing.
  • Numbers of pages. The number shall be placed in the top right corner 1 inch from the right side.

Typical structure of an APA paper.

The actual outline and dividing the Main body into paragraphs or chapters will depend on the type and length of the paper, but there is a general structure and components besides the Main Body that shall be put in the essay.

  1. Title page with the title, name of the author(s) and institution.
  2. Abstract is typical only for big papers, consists of maximum 250 and is placed on the next page after the Title page.
  3. Main Body begins on the page 3. The text is aligned to the left with 5-7 spaced first line of each paragraph and without hyphenating.
  4. Reference list, which includes all of the sources you have used the information for your paper from. Referencing shall include the name of the author, year of publication, title or electronic reference to the source.
  5. Appendix. Presentation of additional material, for example, description of complicated scientific process or reaction can be placed here. However, this section is not obligatory to include.
  6. Tables. Used to present findings of quantitative analysis or statistical data.
  7. Figures. All the materials that present illustrative materials, excluding tables (graphs, pictures, images).

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