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Ap The American Psychological Association

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Rachel Harvey English 300 Dr. Weixel February 25, 2015 By: Rachel Harvey What is APA? APA stands for the American Psychological Association. It originated in 1929 when a group of scholarly men got to together and decided to come up with a set of rules to guide people and make it easier to understand scientific writing. Rules and guidelines for APA style are found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. People who generally use this type of writing style include students and educators in social and behavioral sciences. General Requirements for APA For every APA paper that is typed, each one is going to have the same kind of format. It will follow these guidelines: • 12 point black font (Times New …show more content…

This part of the paper can be very simple, but it gives the reader an idea about what they are going to be reading about and makes them decide whether it is worth reading or not. A good abstract has many qualities that include accurate information, it is easy to read, straight to the point and contains about 150-200 words. You will need to start a new page for the abstract and it will be the first thing the readers see after the title page. There will be a header for this page meaning a page number on the far right, top hand corner and then the title of the paper on the far left, top hand corner of the page. Example: Body of the APA Paper The body of the paper is the biggest chunk. There is no certain length for APA papers unless told to have one, otherwise the length should be a suitable amount of pages to effectively get the main ideas across. This will start on a new page as well, and just like the abstract page it will have the same header. Headings Headings break up the paper into different sections that are important throughout the paper. In the APA style of writing, there are five possible formats that may be used. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association refers to them as “Level of heading”. The levels of heading form the order of sections through the format or appearance. Level of heading Format 1 Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase 2 Flush Left, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase 3 Indented, boldface,

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