Before you write your APA paper, you must decide on the tone of the paper. Will you persuade your reader to believe your thoughts on a particular subject? Or will you simply outline the facts of your subject matter to let the reader decide for themselves? When you're ready to begin....read on.

Required formatting for APA papers start with margins set to one inch. Font set to any sans serif font, most commonly used is Times New Roman, lastly the entire paper should be set to Double Spaced. All writing is from 3rd person.

APA has a Title page with a Running Head which is different than the Main Title of your paper. An Abstract page which follows the cover page. Content should be presented in an Introduction, main content and a conclusion. In text citations create the foundation for your references the last page, of which cannot exist without the in text citations.

Depending on your class, the APA paper may need to include a table of contents, and appendixes, if your Instructor or teacher asks for charts, diagrams or flow charts. In this case the table of contents is the second page, fiollowed by the abstract. As you can see, there are multiple levels for APA formatted papers.

The current field who mostly uses APA formatted papers resides in STEM- which is Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics.

The abstract is a concise summary of your paper written in 3rd person, between 150-250 words. Sometimes the abstract contains key words or processes used to create the paper. Throughout the paper, the writer should be conscious of word choices and remove biases while using an active voice to demonstrate knowledge in the subject matter.

In text citations are used to cite resources within the text. Every in-text citation must have a corresponding citation in the references. If the writer use a text book, novel or newspaper article with direct quotes the citation will contain (The author's name, date of publication, and page number). If using an online source the in text citation will contain (The author's last name, year or date of publication).

References - The title on this page should be centered at the top of the page. All lines following the the first line of the citation will be indented one tab. Italicize title of long works, such as books and journal titles. When using a short title do not use quotation marks around the title, this includes articles or essays. When you stRt your reference the author's name is inverted, which means, last name is first, then the Author's initials, as spelling out their first names are not required. If a source does not have an author, the writer may use the title of the site where they found the information. All References in APA formatted papers must be in alphabetical order.

Remember, if the writer needs help, go to your scholl's librarian, online Universities and colleges have writing labs, links and help available from your instructors.