A Complete Guide To Writing An Apa Master's Dissertation

If you are tasked with writing a dissertation for your Masters course in the APA style, there are a few key things to keep in mind as you go along. Typically, it is fairly easy to format your paper according to this style guide after you have completed writing it. However, it is always advisable to begin writing it with the format in mind in order to save time.

Useful tips on following an APA style for your Master’s paper

  • The APA style is basically a list of style guides on how to make your paper look more professional and so that it conforms to the standard way of presenting such academic work.
  • From the perspective of the whole document, it is important first of all to look at the line spacing of your document. This should all be double-spaced.
  • How you use margins throughout your document is also crucial. There should be a one-inch margin on all sides of each of the pages of your dissertation. This means that there should be a one-inch gap on the top, bottom and both sides of the pages.
  • You should also set your writing application to a pre-set where it leaves one Tab space for every new paragraph in your document. Each subsequent line in the same paragraph will not need to be indented. Your document should also typically have a title page, where the title of your dissertation is writing out in the center of that page. Your name and some other course details can also be mentioned, depending on the specific rules set by your University.
  • Finally, the most important point in the APA style guide is the section on references. This kind of a research paper is bound to have a lot of citations in the text. For this, you will need to create one last page in the document that will be a list of the references you have used in your paper. The page should duly be marked as ‘References’ while you will then proceed to list out all the books, journals or any other sources that you have used. There are more detailed instructions on how you can format the references page that are available in the APA guide.

The APA style guide is, therefore, nothing to be too worried about. It is important however that you go through some of the basic rules before you begin writing and then double check all of them after you have finished writing your paper.