assignment4

Sample APA Paper Title That Is Descriptive but Less Than Twelve Words

Your Name

Southern New Hampshire University

Course number: Course name

Professor’s name

Date (full month + day number, year)

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Abstract

The title “Abstract” should be centered at the top of the page without any quotes, bolding, underlining, or changing of the font in any way. Your abstract should be between 150 and 250 words, like this sample abstract which is 200 words. You should NOT indent the first line in your abstract, but the entire abstract should be double spaced. There are two types of abstracts: informational and descriptive. An informational abstract should communicate the contents of the report, and include the purpose, methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations. This allows the reader to determine if they want to read the entire report. A descriptive abstract tells what the report contains and details the purpose, methods, and scope, but it should not include the results. A descriptive abstract introduces the reader to the subject. There are many ways to formulate an effective abstract. The paragraph(s) should be unified, coherent, and understandable on their own. It should NOT include new information; it should simply be a summary of the report. An abstract should be written in such a way that it is accessible to a wide audience.

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This is where you begin writing the body of your paper. Before the beginning of the text of your paper, you want to be sure to insert and center your full title in bold, but do not underline or change the font in any way. If your title is long enough to run into two lines, it should still be centered, but it should also be double spaced. You should not include extra space between your titles and the body of your paper. You want to make sure that your entire paper, including the title page, abstract, body, and references, are double spaced. All pages should have page numbers, including the first, aligned with the right margin.

Whenever you start a new paragraph, you should indent ½ inch. You can check the settings in your word processor to make sure that the size of your indentation is correct. You should also be sure that your margins are one inch all the way around the paper. Most word processors have the one inch margin as a standard setting, but it is always a good idea to double check to ensure they are the correct size.

You should never “justify” (make even) the sides of your paper in APA format. If you set your paper to the justify setting, it will mess us the spacing between words and will make your paper difficult to read. You want to left-align your paper when it is in APA style. Whenever you begin inserting quotes in your paper, it is very important that you cite the information both in the text and on the Reference page. When you do an in-text citation, there are several ways to do so. According to Lester Faigley (2015), “APA style emphasizes the date of publication. When you cite an author’s name in the body of your paper, always follow it with the data of publication” (p. 292). For books with several publication years, select the most recent. With quotes that are less than 40 words, the end punctuation mark goes outside the parentheses, as indicated above. If the author’s name is not included in the sentence, then the name, year, and page number (if applicable) should follow the sentence in parentheses with commas separating each element (Faigley, 2015, p. 292).

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As Faigley (2015) points out, “APA style included the abbreviation for page (p.) in front of the page number” (p. 292). When citing a work with no page numbers, the appropriate citation should include the paragraph number following “para.”; if the work is long, then you should also include a shortened version of the heading title in quotations and the paragraph number (American Psychological Association, 2020, “Direct Quotes”, para. 3). It is important that you include a page number when you have a direct quote, but when you are summarizing and paraphrasing, you only include the author and year, unless your professor has instructed you otherwise (Faigley, 2015). To understand the guidelines of citing and referencing a source with multiple authors please see Figure 1.

[Figure 1: American Psychological Association (APA), 2019]

If there is no identified author of your source you can use the association or organization as the author if one is identified. If there is no author or organization then you can use the first few words of the source’s title (American Psychological Association, 2020).

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If quotes are 40 words or less, they can be included in the same line as your text. However, if the quote is more than 40 words, it should be presented as a block quote.

Quotations of more than 40 words should be indented ½” from the margin. Include the citations from the original text, but do not list those works in your references unless you cite them again elsewhere in the paper. For block quotations, parenthetical citations go outside closing punctuation. (Faigley, 2015, p. 317)

Once you have finished the block quote, be sure that the first following line is an explanation of the quote in your own words, and it is NOT indented unless you are starting a new paragraph.

At the end of your paper, you should have the final section titled References. The entire paper should be double spaced, including the References. On the References page, the word “References” should be centered at the top of the page in bold, but without any quotes, underlining, or changing of the font in any way. Immediately following the word “References,” your entries should begin in alphabetical order based on the last name of the author or the first content word in the title. All but the first line in each entry should be indented ½ inch (hanging indent). While working on your References page, you should go through your paper and be sure that each of the sources you have used (with the exception of personal communication) is included in the list of references. When citing a source with two to twenty authors on the Reference page list by last name, first initial; commas separate each name, and the last is separated by a comma and the ampersand symbol. See the Purdue Owl website to learn more about multiple author references (Angeli, 2019).

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Visit snhu.mywconline.com to make an appointment Second floor of the Wolak Library Learning Commons  Phone: 603-645-9606  Fax: 603-645-9753 Email: WolakLearningCenter@snhu.edu  MySNHU: https://my.snhu.edu/Offices/LearningCenter/Pages/home.aspx

Last Updated 1/20/20

References

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual. American Psychological Association.

Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2019). General format. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/ 560/01/

Faigley, L. (2015). The brief Penguin handbook. Longman.

Basic Format of Article in a Periodical: Author, A. A., Author, B.B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number), pages.

Basic Format of Book: Author, A.A., (Year of Publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher.

Basic Format of Nonperiodical Web Document: Author, A. A., & Author B. B. (Date of Publication). Title of document. http://Web address

APA Sample Paper

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Last Updated 1/20/20