How to Correctly Format an APA Style Academic Paper, part 1
Great Writing Tips For Newbies, Session 11
This is the eleventh part of an ongoing session of writing tips that I post regularly to this blog. For those of you who are keeping up with these postings, thanks. In session ten we went over how to write better user-friendly web content. In that session, I discussed ways to write for the web such as writing usable content, writing user-friendly content, and how to test your writing for user readability.
Session 11
Academic writing can be hard, especially for a new writer. When you have to format a paper in the American Psychological Association (APA) writing style it can be somewhat difficult if it’s your first time writing one. Not to worry though, it’s not as hard you think!
There are many websites out there you can go to gather info on how to write an APA style paper. One of the best is the Purdue University Online Writing Lab. This site is great for learning how to form citations, styles, and proper paper formatting techniques.
But, as good as any site is, you can always have difficulty with your writing and become frustrated when searching a site for the answer you need. This is where this session comes in. We are going to start and go from beginning to end with APA paper that covers every issue you could run across. To accomplish this we are going to employ methods I have discussed in earlier sessions for good writing and research practices.
For starters, the first thing we need to do is open up a word processor program and make a template we can use to format our paper with. The image you see below is a screen-shot of the template I use. As you can see, there is a “Running head: TITLE” section in the header with page number, and places reserved for the title and author’s information centered in the middle of the page.
This next shot is the second page of my template. The “Running head:” words are removed (we will go over how to do this next), the page number advances, and there are section listings that are commonly found in most academic papers in bolded letters.
Now, all we need to do is write. To show examples for this we are going to use a short brief paper I wrote for a college class to set up our writing. We will do this here in Medium instead of with a word processor so that everything comes out nicely. Let’s get started!
First, we need to get our “Running head:” set up correctly on our paper. For future reference, this is the site I go to when I need a refresher on this- asklibrary.com. The way to do this and get it right every time is like this,
(I have this set up on my template, so when I need to write a new paper I just open the template and copy/paste everything to a new blank document then save that doc with a new name, the “Running head:” transfers each time)
- Go to the Insert page in Word. Select Header from the Header & Footer section.
- From the ribbon select the header pull-down menu and select the Blank (Three columns) option.
- You’ll put your title in column one, delete column 2. Highlight column 3 and from the ribbon select current position> plain number.
- Type the title of the paper in all caps. If it is over fifty characters, use a shortened version of the title.
- After typing the title, place the cursor immediately to the left of the page number. Press page until the page number is on the right of the page.
- Select the Different First Page option at the top center. Make sure you are on the first page and repeat steps 3–5, but include the words ‘Running head:’ before entering the title.
(The above taken/referenced from- https://asklibrary.com.edu/faq/60558)
Now, with our paper set up, we need an introduction. With most academic papers it is always best to have a certain amount of “original” material from the author in the document. It is a good idea to keep the intro/abstract all original to show that the author of the paper has a good grasp of what they are introducing in their writing. For our introduction, we have the following original material-
Introduction
The utilization of biosensors and 3-D printing has acquired much attention in different areas of business and science in the past few years. Applications for these technologies have many implications for the use of each in areas like organic farming, medical devices, for the detection of chemical and biological weapons, the chemical sciences, and human enhancement.
The two are each very much emerging technologies of their own that can be explored in detail individually. It is the purpose of this brief to look at each of these technologies separately and then see how when combined, they can provide multiple benefits to businesses, society, and the scientific and medical communities.
Keywords: biosensors, 3-D printing, medical devices, chemical sciences, human enhancement
The intro/abstract is followed by a list of keywords, we discussed keyword issues in session 7. The word “Keywords” is always italicized, followed by a colon, then a list of certain words that will draw the attention of a search engine.
In our next session, we will move on to the discussion portion of the paper. In this section, we will go over how to place citations correctly in your text, how to style your paper, and how to do level 2 and 3 headings.
Thanks for taking time out of your day to review the information presented here in session 11.
If you missed session 10 feel free to review it at your own leisure. I hope this article was of some help to those seeking to become better writers. Session 12, part 2 of this session, will be posted soon.
As always- find what works best for you in everything that you do, including writing. Always write what you feel and never let others sway your opinions or ideas.
Write something GREAT today!
