An essay is an academic piece of writing that covers a certain topic. Writing an essay is not considered an extremely difficult task. However, those who do not have necessary skills and knowledge may encounter a lot of problems with it. What is more, it has to be formatted in a style indicated by a tutor, which also poses a great challenge to students. Oftentimes, the essay should be written in APA style, and students get frustrated because they do not know its specific features. APA essay format has many rules and guidelines that need to be followed when preparing a paper. Therefore, you should retrieve all available information on this very style and carefully analyze it in order to format your piece of writing in a proper way.
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APA is an abbreviation for American Psychological Association. This format is mainly used when writing academic papers in the fields of social sciences and education. When preparing an APA format essay, a student should take into account all the characteristics that distinguish it from other styles. This way, if you want to cite a source within the text, you have to indicate its author, publication date and page number in parentheses. Note that the in-text citation has to be presented right after the quoted or paraphrased material. In addition, you need to indicate the source on the reference page providing full bibliographic information. If you check an APA essay example, you will see that Times New Roman, double spacing, and 1-inch margins are usually applied. The size of the font can vary from 10 to 12. One of the most important things you have to pay your attention to is running head. It must be presented in the upper left hand corner of a page. This is the shortened version of paper’s title and it does not exceed 50 characters. Use an APA format essay example to see how it looks like.
There are few main elements any APA style essay includes. They are the following:
- Title page. Topic, author’s name, and institutional affiliation are indicated on the cover page. All the words are capitalized and centered. In addition, double spacing should be applied.
Abstract. Abstract is provided after the title page. The word abstract is centered and capitalized. There is no need to italicize or underline it. Abstract is a concise summary of what is discussed in the paper. It allows the reader to find out the issues that are explored and covered in the essay in detail. Its length is 150-250 words. - Main body. It consists of the paragraphs where the key ideas of the paper are revealed. Each paragraph has to start with a topic sentence, which shows what a paragraph is about. If the paper is lengthy, main body can be divided into sections with corresponding subheadings. In a subheading, all the words, except articles and particles, are capitalized. When writing an APA essay, use only the third person unless the opposite is stated in the instructions given by the tutor.
- List of references. All the used sources are presented on a separate page after the main body. Books, journal articles, and other print or web documents should be indicated in an alphabetical order.
These are the main parts of an APA sample essay. If you need more information on them, you are welcome to use different online and offline handbooks and guides. However, if you know that you will not be able to cope with academic essay for some reason, do not hesitate to ask BestWritingOnline.com for help. We are willing to provide you with the best piece of writing produced in APA essay format. Guaranteed!
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