APA essay format: the most important elements
What do you need to know about APA essay format? First, the full term of APA is American Psychological Association. If you recently were asked to write an essay in this format you better read this post to avoid some troubles. Or find any example online.
The general guidelines are easy to follow and it can help you to create a decent paper, before you started to panic. There is a quick way to learn the most important parts.
APA essay format requirements
How to organize your pages? In order to write a good APA paper – you need to learn some basics, especially the formatting details.
- Set the margins. Make sure you set your margins to (1). This can be done by adding this inch to every corner of a document.
- Default font. Obviously, 12-pt Times New Roman. However, there are no boundaries, as you may change to other popular fonts.
- The double-space. The entire document should be double-spaced with paragraphs indented ½ an inch.
Among other important rules, your paper must contain a running head. Try to make a short version of your main title in 50 characters. It will appeare in the header of your essay document, confirmed with the left margin. Your essay’s first page, or the cover page, must have a colon “Running header”. Further, it is named as a title.
Cover page is also a key element of APA format paper. Here are the elements worth to mention:
- The full title of your paper
- Your name
- The name of your current institute (school, university, firm)
These elements should be centered on the top half of the page (double-spaced).
Abstract is the short version of the main ideas you provide the readers with. Mainly, the 150-200 words is enough to summarize the main points. The word “Abstract” should be centered at the top of the page (double-spaced, as usually).
The main body consists of the title and intro. After you made a formatting process with your abstract, you can begin a new page of your paper with a body section. A restatement of your main title is necessary. This will help you to show where the actual paper starts. Then you go for an introduction. The most common mistake is to label your introduction. Try to avoid this and take a look at this sample:
Headings is the next step after you finished with the title and intro. There are few levels of APA format essay:
- Level 1 heading – is the main one.
- Level 2 headings are subheadings of Level 1.
- Level 3 are subheadings of Level 2 – and so forth.
If you want to add quotations – remember that the length is 40+ words.
More to come, as we are reaching the list of references. These are the formatting details to note for the overall page.
- First, “References” word must be centered at the top of the page – in no bold, no italics, no colon style.
- Next, is to order your list of references alphabetically.
- Double-space feature is also presented here.
- You can use the hanging indent to align first line with the left margin. The subsequent lines are indented ½ inch.
