All You Need To Know About APA Format Citation
Citation plays an important role when it comes to writing essays, term papers etc with references of other supporting articles and written pieces. Various types of citations are available to insert and develop a complete reference-supported academic paper because references enhance the credibility of your essay.
One of the most commonly used style, the APA style, was constituted by the American Psychological Association. This format of citation is widely used for the styling of academic papers that have the background of psychology, education and other social sciences.
Components of APA Writing Style
The APA style, at first consists of a title page which has a header of the topic and the corresponding page number. There is a running head which states the abbreviated name of the topic upon which the body of the essay, term paper, dissertation etc is written. In the centre of the title page, the full title of the topic and author information is written. Margins are of 1 inch on all sides of the paper and a standard 12 pt. Times New Roman font is chosen with double spaces.
The abstract collectively states the purpose and content of the paper. It should be precise yet well-defined. The title should never be bolded or underlined and should be double spaced at the top center of the page.
Headings should properly be inserted without any bold and italicized or underlined fonts. They help the writer to categorize the body of the term paper or essay in an organized way. The headings have 5 different levels, each with different cases, indents and styles.
Quotations and references that are added to the text should be appropriately cited. Citation means providing all the necessary information about the author, the book or website, the location, date, and the publisher. It is mandatory so that the pulled reference or support can be validated by the original source which in turn gives more authenticity to the paper. This is called in-text citations. Although in-text citation does not provide all the information as it is mentioned later on in the last page of references.
The last page consists of a reference list or bibliography. It provides all the relevant information about the reference quoted earlier in the body of the paper. It should be titled ‘References’ without any bold and italicized fonts. Entries of the information should be alphabetically arranged using the author’s last name. Initials are used for first and middle names of the author.