A Brief Guide On How To Format An Essay In The APA Style

Using the APA style to format an essay is an easy way to ensure that your paper follows a professional looking and academic style of writing. The American Psychology Association constructed this style guide to ensure that academic papers written in the social sciences fields would follow a similar pattern of crafting papers.

Things to know about formatting an APA style paper

• When you are typing out your paper, the accepted font to use would be the Times New Roman in the 12 font size. This is the easiest way to ensure that your work looks professional and easy to read. You should also ensure that your entire document has been double spaced.
• You must also remember to leave a one-inch margin gap on all sides of all the pages. This means that there should be a one-inch gap on the top, bottom and both sides of the pages.
• The first line of every new paragraph should be indented by half an inch. This can easily be achieved by pressing the “Tab” key once on your computer.
• Including headings in a paper is something that depends on the length of your essay. In any case, you should discuss the necessity of headings with your instructor or teacher so that you can follow the correct guidelines. In the case of a short paper, you might not need to divide it into different sections with headings.
• If you are going to use headings then, you should remember to look into the five different headings and subheadings formats of the APA style to decide which one or ones you are going to use for your own paper.
• Your APA style paper should ideally include a separate Title page. This page will consist of the title of your essay, which should be entered on that sheet.
• After you have completed writing your paper, you must also include a page marked as ‘References’ at the end of the document. This will include the citations and references that you might have made in your paper. You will need to create this even if there is only one citation in your document.

These are the basic and most important rules to remember when you are writing a paper in the APA style. There are more in-depth details and format rules available that you can research after you have finished writing the paper.