Starting Your APA Format Papers

APA is one of the most widely used styles of formatting for research and scientific papers. The style at first can seem a bit intimidating but there are some guidelines you can follow to help you with you APA format paper. Once you learn the APA style and how it is done you will find that it will become second nature.

APA Manual

You will want to get a copy of the manual. You will be able to find this online, at the library, or even at a bookstore. It will have specific information that is detailed on APA format. The new edition even has information on Internet sources, charts, tables, and print ethics. There are many different editions that are out there the best thing however is to make sure that you get the current addition since the standards can change.

APA Templates

You will want to check the word program that you will be using for your paper to see if it offers any style guides or templates for APA formatting. You will find that many of the programs that are used for word processing offer an APA style format when it comes to footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and even citations. If you are not sure of the ability for the program to format it correctly then you should do it because its better to take the extra time than to simply hope it is correctly.

Understand The Format

You will need to make sure you are paying attention to things like the page headers, typeface, margins, and even the line spacing. You will need to meet all the requirements below:

  • Serif typeface 12-pt. For figure labels sans is used.
  • Whole paper double spaced.
  • 1/2 inch indent on the line of all paragraphs.
  • leave a right margin that is ragged by aligning to the left-hand margin.

Make Sure Order Is Correct

Each page needs to be numbered as well as separate from the rest. The pages should start with 1 and be consecutively numbered. Title page is page 1, abstract page 2, page 3 starts the main text, and references are their own page after the main text is complete. The tables will start on a page of their own after the references and each has their own page. After the tables starts the figures and each has their own page. Each appendix that you have will have its own page as well.