Before tackling the endeavor of writing an academic paper, the first thing to take into consideration is the format of the assignment. In most English classes, the paper is required to have MLA (Modern Language Association) style formatting, which includes in-text parenthetical citation. Many History Classes utilize CMS (Chicago Manual of Style), which instead uses superscripts and footnotes for
. citation. The third major formatting system is known as APA (American Psychological Association). This formatting system is very popular, not only within the ivory towers of academia, but in the world of post-graduate research as well. The paper should be double-spaced and have one inch margins. A font size of 12 points is generally expected and Times New Roman is the typically used typeface. Research papers in APA style begin with an abstract, which is simply a summary of the research and explanation of field methods used in the paper. It is usually frowned upon to use hyphenation to connect words at the end of a line, and these papers are rarely justified and always left-aligned. Like any formal writing, the use of contractions is not a good idea. Depending on the topic of the paper, it is a good idea to limit the use of first person pronouns. This makes the paper seem more professional. Similar to MLA, parenthetical citation is used in this format over CMS style citation. There are also many factors to take into consideration when including tables in an APA style paper. For example, vertical lines are not in accordance with APA guidelines, so any tables in an APA paper should not contain vertical lines. Like any academic paper, a bibliography or references page is necessary to provide proper credit for the research used in the paper. For more information and sample papers, please see: http://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/mp/APA/apa4b.htm http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ More Reference Links: http://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/mp/APA/apa4b.htm http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
