Tips On How To Write A Graduate School Essay In The APA Format

The American Psychological Association or APA format has been designed for graduate school essays and other educational documents. You will need to make sure that you format your paper correctly. It can cause you to lose points if you do just one thing incorrectly. Here are some tips on how to write a graduate essay in the right format.

1. Type your paper, double spaced on a standard sheet of paper. There should be one inch margin on all sides. The font should be easy to read. The italics should look different than the regular type. Times New Roman font in a 12 pt. font is the perfect choice.
2. Include a running head at the top of every page. The title should be in the upper left and the page number in the upper right. The title shouldn’t be more than 50 characters long.
3. Include a title page separate from the main text. You will include the title, your name, the name of the school, and the date in the center of the page double spaced. The title should have “Running head” before it on the title page only. Use a colon in between “running head” and title.
4. The abstract will be on the next page of the paper. Center the word “Abstract” and then start afterwards. It will be a summary of your research and should be on a separate page from the main parts of the text. It should include the research topic, the research questions, the participants, the methods, the results, a data analysis, and the conclusions. It should be between 150 and 250 words in length.
5. Include in-text citations. The format of the in-text citations should be the author’s last name with the year that the reference was published with a comma in between them. Then include the page number that the direct quote was found on. This is not necessary for paraphrased material. It should look like this, (Smithy, 2078, p. 547). Then the matching reference will be presented in the reference page at the end of the paper.
6. A reference page will start on the next page after the text ends. “Reference” should be listed on the center of this page.

When you are trying to format the paper correctly, it is a good idea to get a sample essay to use as a guide.