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APA Format Research Papers: Essential Guidelines for Beginners
As the title implies, APA format research papers are research papers which follow the format and style developed by the American Psychological Association. In that regard, following APA format, research papers acknowledge complying with certain rules and requirements in formatting the paper. Most students are familiar with the requirement of APA format research papers, concerned with the reference style, while other format requirements might be overlooked. This article provides short notes that might fill in such gap in knowledge.
The requirements of fonts and margins can be seen similar in APA format research papers, and thus there are not many details in such aspect. In APA format research papers, it is plain and simple, i.e. 1 inch margin, and 10 to 12 pt. font. The type of font is not specified, with the only condition of being suitable to academic purposes, and thus, Arial or Times New Roman will do the task. The title page, in that regard, contains standard elements as well, in which APA format research papers should indicate the title, the author, and the institution.
The differences might be seen in aspects such as including a running head that contains a capitalized title of the research paper, and the usage of headers throughout the paper. If the latter is self explanatory, the headings in APA format research papers might require separate consideration. If your APA format research paper has two levels of headings, these levels should be differentiated in format, in which level one headings should be bold and centered, while level two headings should be bold and aligned to the left.
In APA format research papers both levels should be uppercase and lower case. If other levels are present they should be also differentiated, i.e. indented bolded lowercase, indented bolded italicized lowercase, etc.