APA RESEARCH PAPER FORMATTING GUIDELINES DOS AND DON’TS

APA research paper follows a special writing style in language and formatting. It aims to bring uniformity to the manuscript by giving detailed instructions about the margins, font size or style, headers and footers, heading and subheading, and ideal spacing between texts. Thus, this article will discuss a complete guide to using APA formatting and referencing guidelines in research papers. It will discuss what type of literature the APA research paper is, some general APA writing guidelines, ways to write a research paper in APA style, and things to consider and avoid while writing the APA research paper.

1. What are APA research papers?

It refers to the set of guidelines that aims to make a piece of literature more organised and readable. The American Psychological Association created it as a standard language for writing research papers. Thus, the APA research paper is the one that we write using the APA language and formatting guidelines.

The biggest advantage of using APA writing and formatting guidelines in research papers is that it makes your paper more organised. Moreover, it makes your content plagiarism-free by acknowledging the original authors using proper in-text citation and bibliography. Furthermore, APA guidelines aim to increase the creditability of a research paper as the APA is commonly called the language of academia. APA research paper is popular for clarifying concepts by establishing a connection between different ideas. Thus, a few words we can say that the APA research paper follows American Psychological Association guidelines in formatting, referencing, and connecting ideas in research. If you find any difficulty, you can also get research paper writing help.

2. What are general APA guidelines?

Regardless of the nature of the research, you can follow the following general guidelines for writing a research paper in APA style.

1. The margin should be 1-inch on all sides of a page.
2. The font style and size should be Times New Roman and 12, respectively.
3. The whole page must be double-spaced.
4. The text must be aligned to the extreme left of the page.
5. Each line of the text must be intended by 0.5 inches.7
6. APA paper must also contain a byline, title page, and reference list.

3. How to write the APA research papers?

It must have a few important elements: a title page, abstract, brief introduction, short methodology, results and findings, discussions, and references. Moreover, the APA guide gives complete instructions to write all these components effectively.

APA guidelines for writing different components of a research paper are undermentioned:

1. Title page: The title page must contain at least 10-12 words. Moreover, it must also reflect the main content of the research paper. Your name, topic of a research paper, Institution’s name, and submission date must be aligned at the centre of the page. It must also have a page number in the running header.
2. Abstract: It must contain 120 words in the form of a single paragraph having double spaced between them. The components of an abstract contain a topic statement and a brief description of the method, results, and discussions.
3. Introduction: Introduction must summarise and critically evaluate empirical knowledge about the subject under study so that readers can get the gist of the research at a single glance.
4. Methods: It is the easiest part. Here, you need to describe the steps you followed to achieve the desired research goals.
5. Results: The results section of an APA research paper includes descriptive statistics, a list of types of hypothesis testing methods, and a final presentation of results.
6. References: In APA style paper, references must be labelled, centred, and not bold. References must have a proper alphabetical listing, double-spaced, and hanging. In in-text citations, the first, second, and third author names must be followed by the year of publication. In the case of more than three authors, you can use et al. after the first author’s name.

4. The thing that you must consider while writing an APA research paper

The above section makes it clear that while writing a research paper in the APA style, it must have a proper title page, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and references. Apart from all, you must also give a bit more concentration to the facts mentioned below:

1. The title of the page must have capitalised the first letter.
2. The in-text citation must not use et al. if the number of authors is less than four.
3. All the margins of a page must be at least 1 inch.
4. The justification of the text is also a must.
5. The whole document must be double-spaced.
6. You can only underline the hyperlinks in the bibliography.
7. All heads and subheads must have the same font.

5. Things you must avoid while writing an APA research paper

To better understand the writing process, it is also important to discuss what one should avoid achieving excellence in academics. The following are some important things that researchers must avoid while writing an APA research paper:

1. An ill-defined thesis reduces the overall quality of the research paper.
2. Writing too descriptive without giving strong evidence is also a big mistake in writing an APA-style research paper.
3. Students are not allowed to use et al. in the case when a source paper has up to three authors.
4. Incorrect header and quotations are important things that everyone should avoid.
5. Be careful while citing more and less similar things from multiple sources.
6. Do not underline the journal names.
7. Never be too vague to increase the complexity of a paper
8. Avoid using multiple margins in the main text
9. Do not give the page number at the centre of the page
10. Do not capitalise on the title of the source article if it contains four words.

Consequently, following the American Psychological Association guidelines, scholarly papers are considered APA research papers. It aims to bring clarity to text, remove plagiarism, and logically connect ideas to keep meeting the high research writing standards. It tells researchers what to consider and avoid while writing a research paper.