APA writing style is a popular writing style that is followed by many social sciences or psychology programs. APA format is used by the journals that were published by the American Psychological Association (APA). This document format is present in almost every college bookstore reference section. This APA style is standard and is widely recognized for scientific writing in education.
There are some rules that need to be followed while writing a masters dissertation in APA format along with the instructions given by the teacher. ร Ensure the line spacing as it is very important and makes ease for the reader and makes it easy for making changes.
ร Include the indentations at the beginning of the paragraphs. Some formatting requirements will require to include small indent at each paragraphs’ beginning for this purpose you will have to use the tab key on the keyboard.
ร Arrange the margins of the page correctly on which you are working. Generally, it is required to include the margins at the left side of the page and the right of any text and the top and bottom of every page as well.
ร Use the right format for the citation and references as the references and the citations have the ability to prevent anyone from being accused of the plagiarism, and should consist of correct format according to the given instructions in the official style guide of APA.
ร Abbreviations are not allowed to be used write the full form of the abbreviations such as instead of i.e. write “that is” while the acronyms can be used.
ร The page numbers are always mentioned on the top write corner of the page of the assignment or the essay in the header.
ร Punctuation should be used accurately, like know where to use commas, full stop and semi-colon or question mark in your content.
ร Use & when listing the names of the authors in the in-text citation and in the reference list while use “and” when mentioning about the point of author in the body of your essay or report.
ร Generally, the numbers that are less than and equals to ten are written as words such as five participants, while the numbers greater than ten are expressed as numerical values or digits such as 100 participants.
ร The title of the document is in the sentence case it means that the first letters of the words and the proper nouns in the title are capitalised. The first word after a dash or colon is always capitalised in the references.
ร In the title of the dissertation, each letter in the word is capitalised, except the articles (an, a, the), the prepositions like (in, of, to, against),the conjunctions (for, and, but, nor, or, so, yet)and the infinitive (to).
These are some of the rules to be followed while writing a dissertation in the APA formatting style which is commonly used.