Plagiarism is a big no-no when writing a research paper. Even if you are the author of a published paper and you copy your own work without proper citation, that is still considered as a violation. Another vital matter in research is the organization and presentation of a paper.

How To Format Research Paper

How the related literature and the results or methods is presented or writing research paper abstract could affect the understanding of the reader. A group of professionals from different fields agreed into some guidelines of formatting style to enable an ease of delivering information and receiving knowledge from these research papers.

MLA Style Guidelines Writing

Notice that research paper samples have something in common when it comes to how the contents are arranged and presented. There are two popular research paper formats that are advised to follow when writing A+ research paper that is considered as the standard in different journals or scholarly articles. One is the Modern Language Association style or simply MLA style.

The following are the general guidelines:

  • Keep the references on a separate sheet of paper, titled Works Cited.
  • Arrange the references in alphabetical order using the author’s last name. If no author name is given, use the reference title instead excluding articles like The, A, etc.
  • Left alignment for every start of an entry, and indentions are done from the left margin as well.
  • Double space the contents.
  • Whenever writing a publishing company, shorten its name while using UP initials whenever stating University Press.

 

Within text citations

These are all guidelines to help you avoid plagiarism. Proper citation should be observed, so whenever you cite an author, and you include the author’s name in the text, provide the title and year of publication placed within a parenthesis, at the end of the sentence that you paraphrased.

APA Style Guidelines

APA style is useful as a guide to writing a research paper that would help you avoid plagiarism and teach you proper citation. APA style is not limited to the content of the paper but also includes formatting style from cover pages for research paper to the references section.

  • Font style is Times New Roman, and font size is 12.
  • Margin should be one inch for every side.
  • Line spacing should be double spaced.
  • At the end of every sentence, use two spaces from the period of the last sentence.
  • Align all text to the left.
  • Running head. Use running head throughout every paper. Only include the words “Running head:” in the cover page.
  • Title of the paper, author’s name, institution’s name should be placed at the center.
  • When writing an abstract, limit it up to 250 words. Make sure that the information in the abstract are all found in the following subsections of the paper.
  • Reference page should be separate from the rest of the other sections.
  • The references should also be double spaced and arranged in an alphabetical order using the author’s last name. Titles and subtitles of books should be italicized, use abbreviations like “p.” or “pp.” for the page numbers of articles.

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