New paper type - Summary of online lectures 5% OFF!
Essay format means a set of rules which determine the way you should arrange your paper. These guidelines include the title page, the outline, citations, and conclusions, as well as the basic structure of your essay.
Your teacher or professor may have a favorite format, in which case it is recommended to follow this specific style. Particular essay formats help students to make their essays well-organized and neat. Following precise instructions may be very beneficial when it comes to essay writing and formatting. Also, some educational institutions may require a specific essay format which you should follow.
Basic essay formats include the MLA essay format, the APA essay format, and the Chicago style essay format. A little further in this article, we will talk about each of these formats separately and identify their main features and differences between them.
Every quality paper should consist of a title page, proper text capitalization, correct structure, citations or notes, a list of works cited, and a hook. Use our detailed guide on proper essay formatting, which is presented below.
While writing the first page of your essay, follow these simple guidelines:
All academic works have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. If your essay consists of five paragraphs, two of them will include an introduction and conclusion. The main body of your paper, where you provide arguments and supporting evidence, will take three paragraphs. Writing any type of paper becomes less overwhelming after you learn how to structure a simple five-paragraph essay.
Support your ideas with logical evidence discovered in the process of your research and make smooth transitions from one paragraph to another.
In this part of the essay, you are supposed to assemble all the main points and conclude your paper.
In-text citations are used when you need to cite someone else’s work in your essay to document the original source of the provided information. When doing in-text citations, you should provide the author’s last name and a page number in parentheses.
Here you should list all used sources of information in alphabetical order. If a reference occupies more than two lines, indent the second line to the right by one inch, as well as the rest of the lines in the same reference. The author’s last name must be followed by the first name. After this, write the title and provide publishing information.
Now, let’s explore the most popular styles of formatting.
The MLA format implies the following guidelines:
Font: Times New Roman, size 12
Spacing: Double. Don’t use extra spaces between paragraphs
Heading: Must be written in the upper left corner. Example:
Margins: One-inch top and bottom margins, left and right.
Page numbers: Put your last name and page number in a header, which should be present on every page.
Title: Format and center it properly above the first line of your essay. The font and its size should exceed much of the paper itself.
Indentation: Pressing tab will do the job (it should be 1/2 inch).
Align: Align it evenly to the left-hand side.
Before we explain the APA format in detail, let’s distinguish these two styles of formatting.
Here are their similarities:
There are also several differences:
Now let’s talk about the APA format.
The APA style is the most popular among different college essay formats, so you will definitely benefit from knowing its requirements. If you use the basic APA format structure, follow similar guidelines as with the MLA style:
It should be noted that some teachers may require slightly different characteristics than the original APA format implies.
Chicago style essay format is common in academic writing, where you need to focus on the source of origin. Precise citations or footnotes are crucial in this case.
Here is the structure of the Chicago essay format.
In conclusion, we would like to provide you with some general advice on essay writing.
Good luck!
Extensive research for a high-quality paper that will suite professor's wishes can take a lot of time.
Our experts in custom writing will do it for you with pleasure.
We will cal you back
in 15 minutes