How to Write a Good Research Paper in APA Format?

One of the most popular formats for writing a research paper for many schools is in APA format. It is a general format that is used so that every student presents a paper in the same format so that their paper is graded on their writing and not on their choice of formatting. When you have the same format requirement of all of your students, you can also see that you will be able to request that a paper is a certain amount of pages instead of a certain word count.

It is harder to judge how much information that you will need for a paper that has to be a certain word count. When you are writing a research paper, it is easy to judge your timing when you know it has to be ten pages long. It helps the student gage how long each section of the paper should be. If there was no specific formatting style, then a student could choose a font that produced bigger letters or wrote their paper in a larger font and therefore not have to write the same amount of content as the other students.

APA Formatting Requirements:

  1. The margins should be one inch wide on all sides of the paper.
  2. The paper should be double spaced.
  3. There should be a title page and reference page separate from the text.
  4. There should be a header on every page that includes the name of the paper flush to the left and the page number flush to the right.
  5. The references should be cited in accordance with APA citation format in the reference page. The in text citation should be (Author, Date of Publication).
  6. The paper should contain proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling.
  7. The beginning of the paragraphs should be indented.
  8. The paper should include a thesis statement.
  9. The title page should include in the center of the page the title, the author, the class name and number, the university name, the professor’s name, and the date of submission.
  10. The titles should be centered but in regular text.

These are the basic formatting requirements that should be used to write your paper in accordance with the APA formatting style. There are specific requirements for writing the references. Please refer to an APA guide or use the formatting option from your online library for the APA format.