Tricks For Writing A Dissertation: Using An APA Format Example
Writing your dissertation can be a lot of work, and especially if you have to use as specific format such as APA style. If you are confused and wondering how to start, then keep reading to find out some tricks you can use. The American Psychology Association, which is what APA stands for, is used by many journals as the standard, as well as in colleges and universities for teaching you how to properly format your writing. The actual volume of the APA manual is very long and detailed, so there will be things you struggle with, but for most papers you can use a few key parts of it and not worry too much over the finer details.
Basics of APA formatting
When you are looking for an example to use, you need to know what APA style even looks like, so you can be a good judge of whether your sample is worth using. The below tips will help you to format your own along with the example that you find.
- Basics:
- Your fonts should be at 12 point in Times New Roman or Courier Have a 1” margin around all sides of each page
- Avoid biased language: make sure that you refer to people by countries rather than race, such as saying African American instead of Black
- Talk objectively about your subject matter instead of citing opinions
- Capitalization:
- The names of tests
- Major words in headers that have more than 4 letters
- Names of school departments or classes
- Do not capitalize the names of hypotheses or theories
- Numbering things:
- In tables and charts, do not use any letters but use only numbers consecutively
- Label all table contents clearly with measurement units
- Always use a zero before a decimal if a number is less than one
- Spell out numbers that are below ten, use numerals for numbers above ten (such as: eight and 45)
There are other rules for writing in this style, but these are some of the most important that you might stumble across. Using the above tips in your writing will help it to be much more effective and professional compared to any other standard. Make sure that you always defer to your professor’s instructions on anything you are confused about, because he or she is the one who will be grading your work and it must follow the style correctly.