What are the format requirements for academic papers? How to choose a suitable English paper font?

Students in our country have experienced this situation: the teacher has not read the content of the thesis, but because of the format of the thesis, he has already said "this is not well written!". Essay format is one of the biggest fears of students submitting essays. No matter how rich the content you have written, even if you have caught up with the due, if the format and font of the paper do not meet the teacher's requirements, your paper will definitely be deducted points.

Students studying abroad will agree that English essay formatting is just as important in the US, UK or Australia. Then, the following is the effort that the editor has put in for everyone, explaining to the students the characteristics of the English essay format.

What does the English paper format look like?

English paper format refers to the arrangement and organization rules of the author's written content. Its standards involve writing key points such as cover, basic structure, bibliography, end-of-text citations, page headers, fonts, and line spacing. Essay formatting and essay structure is one of the most important parts of academic writing. The standard essay structure is as follows:

Cover

Abstract: Consists of 3 paragraphs, about 300 words in total, 100 words in each paragraph.

Paragraph 1: Must contain the research question, thesis statement, and an overview of the significance of the paper.

Paragraph 2: Key resources, research scope and limitations, etc.

Paragraph 3: The conclusion you came to in your paper.

Table of Contents (with page numbers);

Research Question;

Thesis statement;

Introduction Introduction;

argument;

subtitle;

Conclusion;

Appendix Appendix;

Works cited (bibliography).

Introduction (requires research question);

Main Body;

Conclusion;

Bibliography (Works Cited).

How to apply standard essay format and essay font?

First, you need to consult your teacher. Generally speaking, each school will propose a common paper format standard, but some professors are more inclined to choose their own format. In this case, students should follow the writing rules proposed by the teacher. The rules are usually pointed out on the homework sheet, if not, you can check the syllabus for this course. If you are still not sure what to do, you can also ask the teacher directly:

"The assignment sheet didn't provide formatting requirements. How should I format my paper to get full credit?"

There are at least three most commonly used paper format guidelines, aren’t they all similar? In fact, the science field you are studying may already have a "default set" formatting standard, so we can't write according to the Chicago rules at a school that requires MLA format, because students will still be deducted points. For example, MLA is generally used by English majors and other liberal arts fields, while Chicago style is the most common in the fields of business, history, and art, and APA is mainly used for research writing in the fields of psychology, education, and social sciences. Note, students, that some professors have formatting guidelines they prefer, so it is best to consult them first.

How to write a paper in MLA format

MLA is the abbreviation of Modern Language Association. It is a thesis guidance format formulated by the Modern Language Association of America in 1951 with the release of the MLA Style Sheet. The style sheet, which originally had only 28 pages, has now become the predecessor of the MLA Handbook, which has released its eighth edition. Compared to formats such as APA, the MLA essay format is strict and at the same time the most commonly used. Since the MLA format is different from other paper formats in many ways, students need to read the following MLA rules and structure in detail.

Thesis font: 12pt Times New Roman;

Line spacing:

double;

Do not leave blank lines between paragraphs;

Top, bottom, right, left require 1" margins;

Page number: Mark your last name and page number in the upper right corner of each page, such as "Smith 5";

Left-aligned heading: Name, Teacher Name, Class, Date;

Title: No more than 12 words, center-aligned, and the font is the same as the body of the paper;

Indentation: Just press tab (1/2 inch);

Be sure to include a list of references after the conclusion.

For more information, please see the MLA formatting guide: https://style.mla.org/formatting-papers/

What are the characteristics of the APA paper format?

In 1929, the American Psychological Association published Guidelines for Publications of the American Psychological Association in the Psychological Bulletin. Today, the guidelines have the highest degree of recognition in American academia and are widely used in research writing in psychology or the social sciences.

Thesis font: 12pt Times New Roman;

Line spacing:

double;

Do not leave blank lines between paragraphs;

Top, bottom, right, left require 1" margins;

Page number: mark the first few words of your thesis title (no more than 5 words) in the upper right corner of each page, plus the page number;

Must have a cover: centered paper title, author name, school;

Text indentation: Just press tab (1/2 inch), left-aligned;

Be sure to include a list of references after the conclusion.

Students may have discovered that the format of MLA and APA papers is actually very similar. For example, in terms of citation format, the two do not use footnotes or endnotes, but use the middle clip format .

MLA:She states, “each person is made of five elements….Too much fire and you have a bad temper...too little wood and you bent too quickly...too much water and you flowed in too many directions” (Tan 31).

APA:According to Jones (1998), "Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time" (p. 199) .

There are a few minor differences between the MLA and APA essay formats:

When using the APA paper format, the author should have a cover. The MLA format does not have this requirement;

In APA paper format references are called “References” and in MLA it is “Works cited”;

The reference format is as follows:

(APA) Author Last Name, Publish Date, Source

Bentham, G. (1996). Association Between Lymphoma and Solar Ultraviolet Radiation. British Medical Journal, 312 (7039)

(MLA) Author Surname, Source, Date Published

Brown, Dan. The DaVinci Code. Knopf Doubleday, 2003.

Chicago Essay Format Operational Writing Rules

As the title suggests, the format of this paper comes from Chicago, and more specifically was first published by the University of Chicago Press. Sixteen editions of The Chicago Manual of Style have been published from 1906 to the present, and are mainly used in research works in the humanities. An important feature of the Chicago paper format is its emphasis on the source of cited information, so accurate citations and footnotes are half of the success of the full text format.

Must have cover:

When writing the cover, just remember the word "blank". Put the title of the thesis in the middle of the cover, halfway down, centered. And leave a few blank lines before you can mark the author's name, class, date (each is a new line, the line spacing is doubled);

Top, bottom, right and left require 1" margins.

Font:12pt Times New Roman;

Line spacing:

double;

Do not leave blank lines between paragraphs.

Page numbers: Indicate your last name and page number in the upper right corner of each page, such as "Smith 5". The cover page does not contain page numbers, and the first page of the text should start with "2".

Citations: One of the different requirements of Chicago essay format from MLA and APA formats is citations, which are footnotes and endnotes. I personally think that the footnote citation method is very convenient, because readers can see the specific source of the cited information or data at once, and do not need to spend time flipping through the bibliography list. Footnotes are small single-spaced notes at the bottom of the cited literature page, that is, the cited work, its author, page number, and possibly some supplementary points. Endnotes is located on another page after the main text, which is a list arranged in the order in which the references appear in the paper. When using footnotes and endnotes, students should remember to add numbers (outside the punctuation) at the upper right of the cited lines:

Johnson argues that “the data is unconvincing.”1