APA Style Paper

APA Sample Paper Title FirstName LastName Course Title Instructor’s Name Date Title The text of your document should begin on the first line (double-spaced**) after your title. You should indent the first line of text in each paragraph of the body of the document. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. When you want to insert a short quotation, you just include it as part of the current line. For instance, one of my favorite quotes by C. S. Lewis (1984) is from his book Till We Have Faces. It goes, “Why should your heart not dance?” (p. 96). After quoting something, you need to use a citation. If you have already mentioned the author in your text, then you only need to use the year of publication (and the page number when quoting something directly). If you haven’t mentioned the author in text, or have talked about other things more recently so that it could be confusing, then include the author’s last name in the citation. For instance using the quote: “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road” (Lewis, 1963a, p. 6). More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. Now let’s talk about chocolate. I have this book called 10,000 Dreams Interpreted, and it talks about what it means if you dream about chocolate: To dream of chocolate, denotes you will provide abundantly for those who are dependent on you. To see chocolate candy, indicates agreeable companions and employments. If sour, illness or other disappointments will follow. To drink chocolate, foretells you will prosper after a short period of unfavorable reverses. (Miller, 1997, p. 143) When you want to quote something that is over 40 words long, then you indent the entire quotation one inch and you don’t use quotation marks around it. Also, with normal citations you put the period after the citation, but with block quotations, you leave it before the citation. In further studies of dreams and chocolate, I checked out an online site to see if they agreed. The site said, “To see chocolate in your dream, signifies self-reward. It also denotes that you may be indulging in too many excesses and need to practice some restraint” (Dream Moods, 2003, para. 3). In this case there is no identifiable author, therefore the name of the website or organization is used (i.e., here it was Dream Moods). Since page numbers are not used on websites, the use of para. 3 indicate that the quote could be found on the third paragraph of that website. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. You should start a new paragraph whenever you begin to write about a new idea. There is not a minimum or maximum length for paragraphs, but make sure to try to cover each topic adequately and also without boring your reader. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. More text here more text here more text here. Your font should be 12 point (this text is 12 point), and it should be a conventional serif or sans serif font (such as Times New Roman or Arial, shown). Times New Roman (the font this document is typed in) is a common serif font. Arial is a common non-serif font. Now, what if you want to use a quotation from a published source? For example look at how the following direct citation is presented: “Indiana teacher Richard Beamer trusts his students with his life. Last fall Beamer fulfilled his longtime dream of flying west at treetop level-in a plane built by his fifth-grade students at Southwood Elementary School” (Arce, 2003, p. 38). When you want to reference a source like this, you use the “journal article retrieved from an electronic database” format if the source material was electronic copy of the article. If you want to reference a work that has two authors, you list both authors in your citation (Price & Stern, 2001). In your papers you may not always want to use direct quotations. When you paraphrase, you still need to use a citation. For instance, if I’m thinking about attitudes towards education, I could tell you that Bunt and Yang (2002) examine the Adult Attitude Toward Continuing Education Scale (AACES) to determine its effectiveness. This one only requires a year citation because I mentioned the authors in text, followed the mention directly with what they said, and they are listed on the References page. However, if I tell you that the attitudes of college students are more easily influenced by peers than faculty norms (Milem, 1998), then this one requires the author’s name in a citation because I didn’t mention it in text. Neither requires a page number because they are not direct (word-for-word) quotations. Finally, remember to choose a topic that you like for your paper. It is much harder to get writer’s block when you are interested in what you are writing. Remember also that your instructor has the last word. If your instructor wants to modify these guidelines for your class, then he or she has the right to do so. Make sure to ask your instructor for guidance on how to construct and write you paper. References Arce, I. (2003). Flying high. NEA Today, 21 (4), 38–39. Retrieved January 21, 2003 from the Proquest database. Bunt, A., &Yang, B. (2002). Factor structure of the adult attitudes toward adult and continuing education scale and its capacity to predict participation behavior: Evidence for adoption of a revised scale. Adult Education Quarterly: A Journal of Research and Theory, 52(4), 299-314. Dream Moods. (2003, January 6). Dream dictionary. Retrieved January 14, 2003, from http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/c2.htm Lewis, C. S. (1963a). The great divorce. New York: Macmillan. Lewis, C.S. (1963b). Till we have faces. San Diego: Harcourt. Milem, J. F., (1998). Attitude change in college students: Examining the effect of college peer groups and faculty normative groups. The Journal of Higher Education, 69(2), 117-140. Miller, G. H. (1997). 10,000 dreams interpreted or what’s in a dream. Chicago: Rand McNally. Price, R. & Stern, L. (2001). Mad libs: The original #1 mad libs. New York: Price Stern Sloan.