APA Style Essay
Sunday, July 25th, 2010Learning to write academic APA style essays
If you are planning to get enrolled in any of the higher academic programs, you must be well acquainted with the various dissertation writing formats used in research papers, dissertations and doctoral thesis. Writing APA style essays can be challenging if you have no clue about its specifications and the difference and similarities it has with other academic essay writing formats like the MLA, Chicago, Harvard, among others.
Let us brief you on some of the important aspects of APA style essays. For detailed information, you can refer academic essay style guides or manuals easily available on bookstores. If you want to refer to essay samples or dissertation examples modelled on the APA format, you can access them on our website free of cost. However, if this is the first time you are writing an academic essay, we advise you to first understand the rudiments of academic writing.
1.
An essay written following the essay writing formats, particularly the APA, is divided into a Title page, Abstract, ,Main body and the References. For information about the pagination and styling, refer our sample dissertations and essays.
2.
Use in-text citations when and where necessary. Words, ideas or paraphrases need to be properly cited in the essay. You are required to follow the author-date method for in-text citation. For instance, if you quote a writer, you must end the quote with the following information about the source of the quote: (Author’s last name, year of the publication of the book or article from where the quote has been taken). The complete reference, however, must be there in the reference section.
3.
Names of the books, journals, magazines and other sources must be put into quotes, whenever they occur in the course of the essay.
4.
Shorter quotations must be kept within the paragraph, enclosed in double quotes, followed with parenthetical reference. If there is no reference to the author in the paragraph, include the author’s last name, year of publication of the source and the page number where the quote appears. The format is: (Morrison, 2000, p. 56). P here stands for page.
5.
Longer quotations are to be set off from the text without the quotes and indented five spaces from the margin. The parenthetical citation follows the quotation after the closing punctuation mark. The contents and style of the citation, however, remains the same. In case, you mention any of the parenthetical details in the text itself, that particular entry must be omitted from the parenthesis.
6.
The Reference list of all APA style essays has to correspond with the entries or citations made within the essay. The list is alphabetically arranged and appears at the end of the essay, on a separate page. The format of the reference cited in the reference list varies according to the source. It is different for books, magazines, journals and likewise. The reference format changes according to the number of authors of the source being cited. Here is a commonly used citation format:
Last name of the author, First name or Initials. (Year of Publication). Title of the Book. Location: Publisher.
