How to Write APA Style

Write APA Style How to Write APA Style APA or American Psychological Association format is the official and most commonly used style in psychology, education, and other social sciences. This format originated in1929 through an article that was published in Psychological Bulletin. It laid the basic guidelines that were later expanded into APA Publication Manual.

APA format states a number of specific guidelines for in-text citations and references. If you want to know about apa style and its format for writing your college papers, then the following guidelines will be immensely useful to you.

Guidelines for Writing a Paper

Use a standard-sized paper of 8.5″ x 11″ and with 1″ margins on all sides. The words should be typed and it should be double spaced on the paper.
Use 10-12 pt and go for Times New Roman font or a similar font
Insert a page header in the upper right-hand of every page. For this, type the first 2-3 words of the title of the paper, insert five spaces, and then give the page number.
The APA format includes four major paper sections i.e. title page, abstract page, main body and references.
Compose a title page. It should include a page header as mentioned earlier. On the left top of the page add the words “Running head” followed by a colon. Then give an abbreviated version of your title in 50 characters or less but all in caps. Also type on the upper half of the page your full title, your byline (name[s]), and affiliation (university, etc.). Each should be typed in separate lines.
Go to the next page that will be the abstract page. It should include the page header as mentioned above. Center the word “Abstract” on the first line of the page .Now you can begin writing the concise summary of your research. The word limit should be between 80 to 100 words.
The next page should include the body of your essay. Make sure that you use simple and straightforward language and also properly cite your sources.
Within the body page add Author’s last name, the year and page number(s) in parentheses, just after the quotation mark. Use commas to separate the information pieces.
Also cite your source when you paraphrase someone else’s ideas. However, you don’t require to include page numbers.
In the last page, write the reference list. You should try to include information on every source that you cited in your paper. Before stating the reference list, write the word “References” on the top of the page.

APA format is extensively used for article citations, article references, and book references and even for electronic sources. The format varies in each case.
For instance, in case of citing articles that appear in journals and other periodicals, the basic structure followed is the author-date format. According to this format, the citations should include the author’s last name, followed by the date of publication. While in case of book references, the format includes the author’s last name, first initials, publication year, book title, location, and publisher.
As the APA format has different guidelines for different purposes one needs to learn about the APA writing style as per his requirement.