What is the APA Essay Format?

APA (American Psychological Association) is one of the most popular academic styles used to cite sources in various disciplines, such as psychology, business, finance, and other social sciences. With APA format, you can craft your documents and consistently convey your message.

Key Components of APA Essay Format

 Writing APA essay format means you will most likely need to include a title page, abstract, introduction, body, conclusion, and reference sections. The basic components you need to include are.

• A Title Page

The title page should be included in your APA paper. The title page should contain the paper’s name, your full name and details of affiliations. In other cases, your teacher may ask you for additional information like course title, name of the instructor and date. Your title should be brief and accurate, describing the essence of your paper. Your title can span over two lines, but it should not exceed 12 words.

• An Abstract

An abstract is a short synopsis of the paper that follows directly after the title page. your teacher may require it. The abstract, if included in the paper should not exceed 100 – 20 words of words though this may be adjusted depending on the instructor’s instructions.

• Text in APA Essay Format

When writing in APA essay format, the text will include the actual essay itself: The introduction, body, and conclusion. The top, bottom, left and right margins of your essay should be uniform at least 1 inch. The text should be in Times New Roman size 12 font or another easily readable serif typeface.

• The Essay should be Double-Spaced

At the top right corner of every page, there should be a page number. Each paragraph in your paper should begin with a line indented one-half inch. For professional papers (generally not student papers) each page of an essay also has a running head at the top left. Running head is a shortened title, usually the first few words that should not have more than 50 characters.

• Added Relevant References

All the sources used in your essay need to be listed in a reference list. Your reference section is placed at the end of your paper. List the references in alphabetical order of last names. References should be double-spaced. All sources that are referenced within the paper should be added to your reference section.

• In-text Citations

Parenthetical citations are used in the APA format to reference sources of information. These citations are the author's surname and year of publication.