Learn To Write An APA Format Essay In Just A Few Steps

With the invention of the APA format for the essays, especially the 7th edition of it, formatting the papers has become a lot easier. This format gives the paper a proper logical outlook and makes it a professional formal paper. If you have been using Chicago or MLA, then the APA essay format may seem a bit challenging to implement in your papers, but following the correct steps diligently, you can become well equipped with using the APA format essay.

What Is An APA Format Essay?

APA style is an academic format as well as a writing style meant for academic documents such as books, articles and journals. Mostly it is being used for the purpose of citing sources within the domain of social and behavioral sciences. It is advised by penmypaper that you have to know well what an APA format is before you go deep into the other elements for formatting.

If you are graduate level or just an introductory level student studying in the field of psychology, then you have to write papers and essays of your own quite a number of times. And most important of all, you will have to write your own paper in the APA essay format- “the official publication style of the American Psychological Association.”

APA format essay can be used in a wide range of disciplines such as education, psychology and other social sciences. This kind of a format states out the presentation of the various significant elements in paper that includes margins, line spacing and the structure of the content also.

Well this might seem an easy task for you to format a paper, but teachers and instructors provide special attention to how the paper has been formatted and in what style. They have got strict guidelines regarding this. Sticking to an APA format essay not only gives your readers an idea about what the paper would be about and what to be expected from it, but also ensures that your paper will not miss any of the critical points over some minor errors of formatting.

There are many more formatting styles for your paper like APA 6th, APA 7th, Harvard, MLA format, and many more. The most popular ones are the APA format essay and the Harvard format essay. You can easily use any of these for ‘my paper writing’. These essay formatting styles give the paper a formal look along with a logically structured presentation.

Some Basic Rules To Know For An APA Format Essay

In most cases, your teacher or the instructor will let you know about the rules and regulations related to the formatting style of your essay. You can always ask your teacher for the guidelines. But in case, you have not received any notification on this, you can refer to below given rules towards drafting and formatting an APA format essay.

• There should be a margin of at least 1-inch thoroughly on all sides of your page.
• The entire paper has to be double spaced.
• In each and every page, you have to include a page number at the top right corner of the page.
• For more professional papers, at the top left corner of each of the pages a running head must be included. A shortened form of the title of your papers is the running head, mostly the first few words of it, and must not be more than 50 characters including the spaces.
• The title page of your essay must also be formatted as per the APA format essay. The things to be included in the title page are the title of your paper, your name and the school affiliation. Also you may be asked to place some additional information by the teachers such as instructor name, date and course title.
• The title of the paper has to be famed in a clear, concise and crisp manner. It must clearly state out the subject to be discussed in the paper.
• You can extend your title till two lines but you should not write more than 12 words for the heading of the title.
• A reference list has to be included in your essay which will state out the list of all the sources from where you have taken up information and used them as evidence to support your claims. The reference list must be listed in an alphabetical order with the last anime of the author and must be double-spaced.
• Every paragraph has to be indented. The first word of each of the paragraphs should be indented by one-half of an inch.
• The size for the normal font would be 12 with the style Times New Roman and justified alignment.
• The basic things that you will be including in your APA format essay are: title page, abstract, introduction, body, conclusion and the reference list.

The experts at PenMyPaper can explain these basics of the APA format essay in more detail and can also provide you with APA format example to understand them well. They are quite efficient in drafting these kinds of papers and have the experience of writing any types of essays for years now.

The Format For The Headings

Each of the heading in an APA format essay are being formatted differently to mark the distinctions among them and to make the similar kinds of headings clear to the readers. You can use the APA format essay for up to five headings-

• Heading 1: Bold, centred, title case; the text begins from a new line and the first line of every paragraph is indented.
• Heading 2: Bold, left-aligned, title case; the text begins from a new line and the first line of every paragraph is indented.
• Heading 3: Bold, left-aligned, italic and title case; the text begins from a new line and the first line of every paragraph is indented.
• Heading 4: Bold, title case, indented, period; the text under these headings begin from the same line.
• Heading 5: Bold, italic, indented, title case, period; the text under these headings begins from the same line.

Creation Of APA Format Essay Reference

The sequences in which the various information in the list of reference are being presented in the case of an APA first essay are:

• Name of the book/journal/ article/ online video
• 1 author/ 2 authors/ 3 authors/ organisation
• URL/ DOI

Example of reference for a journal with two authors:

Reference entry

“Andreff, W., & Staudohar, P. D. (2000). The evolving European model of professional sports finance. Journal of Sports Economics, 1(3), 257–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/152700250000100304

In-text citation

Parenthetical: (Andreff & Staudohar, 2000)

Narrative: Andreff and Staudohar (2000)”

Example of reference for a book:

Reference entry

“Smith, T., & Williams, B. M. (2020). The citation manual for students: A quick guide (2nd ed.). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1000/182

In-text citation

Parenthetical: (Smith & Williams, 2020)

Narrative: Smith and Williams (2020)”

Example of reference for a newspaper article with the authors unknown:

Reference entry

“Global warming could unlock carbon from tropical soil. (2020, August 12). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/climate/tropical-soils-climate-change.html

In-text citation

Parenthetical: (“Global Warming,” 2020)”

Example of reference for an online video:

Reference entry

“Scribbr. (2020, August 20). Develop a theoretical framework in 3 steps [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/4y1BAqOnhMM

In-text citation

Parenthetical: (Scribbr, 2020)

Narrative: Scribbr (2020)”

Some Tips For The Perfect APA Format Essay

Apart from ensuring that you have cited all your sources properly and present every piece of information as per the APA style of format, there are a lot more things that can be done to make the entire formatting and writing process of the essay easier.

1. The first and the most important thing is to choose a good essay topic to write upon. You must know how to choose an essay topic well. If you are already given one, then you must start researching upon it else find an apt one first. You must select a subject which is quite specific which will allow you to conduct an intensive research and explore various interesting facets of that subject. Also it should not be a lot specific as that might cause you difficulty to find out information from reliable sources. You would not have enough data to write about and at the same time if you choose something too general, then you might get confused with the enormous amount of information in hand.
2. Start off with the process of researching at the earliest, may be as soon as you get your essay topic or decide strongly upon it. You can begin this by searching out and reading similar information from articles and books. Once you get a bit familiar with the subject of the essay, a preliminary list of sources such as essays, journals, articles, books or studies that may be relevant to the essay topic, has to be created. While writing the essay, you have to be careful and attentive towards the sources that are used to cite information in the essay.
3. Each and every source from which you are taking up information and using them for the essay has to be included in the Reference section of your paper (whether you follow oxford referencing style, APA, Harvard, MLA, or other formats). Alternatively, any source that you will be mentioning in the reference list must have the in-text citation in the essay body paragraphs and the information must be placed clearly.
4. Once you are done with the initial draft of the paper, the next thing that you must be doing is to prepare, review and get the final draft written. To add on, you have to make sure that the entire writing is a lot cohesive in nature and aptly supported by the sources. Another thing is that while writing the final draft you have to be very careful of grammatical errors, typing errors and possible mistakes for formatting.

It can be a bit intimidating for you while writing the first draft as per the APA format essay norms. But learning and understanding the above stated rules properly can ease out your difficulty in formatting the paper very well. Always keep in mind to consult with the teacher or the instructor about the rules to be implemented to format your essay according to the APA format essay. The professionals from the company of PenMyPaper can also help you in making you understand the different aspects of APA formatting and can also write these type of papers for you easily. Let the paper follow a dissertation structure or any other type from any domain, the experts are full of great academic knowledge and can surely help you to yield A+ grade.