2 Popular Research Paper Writing Styles MLA & APA

After the selection of your research paper topic, the next single most important thing is to choose the writing style. Basically, various academic styles are used to meet scholar demands and requirements in terms of conducting a research activity. When it comes to university writing, every academic piece has its proper requirements in terms of formatting, which are depicted in guidelines to research papers writing. Academic writing service providers follow two most common research paper styles and a number of minor ones.

MLA Style-

MLA style is a system for documenting sources in scholarly writing. For over half a century, it has been widely adopted for classroom instruction and used worldwide by scholars, journal publishers, and academic and commercial presses. MLA is first and foremost a set of guidelines for including parenthetical information to cite sources. It focuses on author information when giving credit to sources, so most citation involves using the names of the author or authors of any source. According to the academic writing service websites, MLA style was updated in 2016 to meet the challenges facing today’s researchers.

A properly-formatted MLA-style paper will be constructed as follows:

• Typed on 8.5 X 11 inch paper with 12 pt. font
• 1-inch margins on all sides
• First line of each paragraph indented one half-inch from the left margin (pro tip: use the tab key instead of the space bar to ensure perfect indentation)
• Body text of the paper should be double spaced
• Only one space after periods or other punctuation marks
• Number all of your pages in the upper right hand corner - your page numbers should be a half inch from the top of the paper and in line with your right margin

APA Style-

As a student, you can ask the academic writing services to write my research paper in the APA format. It is the official style of the American Psychological Association (APA) and is commonly used to cite sources in psychology, education, and the social sciences. The APA style originated in a 1929 article published in Psychological Bulletin that laid out the basic guidelines. Its style and guidelines increase the ease of reading comprehension for viewers as well as ensure consistent presentation of content and written material. As with other editorial styles, APA Style consists of rules or guidelines that a publisher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation of written material. Following are the features of APA style-

• Selection of headings, tone, and length
• Punctuation and abbreviations
• Presentation of numbers and statistics
• Construction of tables and figures, citation of references
• Other elements that are a part of a manuscript

Remember, it is always best to consult with your mentor to learn which documentation style he or she prefers you use for a given assignment.