A Brief Tutorial On How To Cite Your Sources In An APA Dissertation

You have a paper to write and it has to be cited in the APA format. This is one of the most common citation guidelines that you will use when writing your dissertations, and it is of utmost importance that you learn how to use if properly. At the moment you can find so much information on how to use the APA format on your paper. In fact a lot of this information can be found on the web, information that will help you do a great job on this paper, even if you have no prior experience with writing a dissertation.

There are some simple guidelines that you are supposed to follow when you are using this format. If you look into them clearly and understand how to write in the APA format, you will realize that you will barely have to struggle to use any of the other formats, because this one is the foundation of all of them. When you understand APA, the rest will come easily to you.

So, to make your work easier, the following are some of the areas where your teachers often look at when marking your paper:

• The title
• The line spacing
• Reference section

The title

From the word go, the title is the first place where your teacher will look for marks to award or deny you. This has to be clearly written, in capital letters and aligned centrally. Anything other than that and you will be docked marks on the spot.

The line spacing

It is not just about line spacing, but all that comes with it. At this juncture, you should be thinking in terms of the fonts that you use, in this case Times New Roman, unless you are expressly advised to do otherwise. The font size should be 12, and line spacing has to be double line spacing. The titles of your chapters will have to be size 14 or 16, depending on what your teacher advises, so that they stand out from the core material in the paper.

Reference section

Now, this is where so many students fail. Everything that is contained herein is supposed to be done in an alphabetical order. If you will find it hard to do that, you can use your word processor to automatically arrange these for you.