It's time to learn how to cite two authors in APA
Headline is very important in any writing. Whether it's an informative article (like this one) or in your degree thesis, scientific research article or thesis, headlines will help you give structure to your work; so that the reader can easily find what he is looking for among so much information and that whoever is interested in the whole subject can take a "break" in reading every now and then. That's why learning how to set up APA headings is so relevant.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), degrees are divided into five levels and each one is different.
About the levels in the APA titles
As we already mentioned, in a research paper written under the APA format, the titles are divided into five levels, but you do not necessarily have to use all of them. It depends on the length of each section of your investigation and how you mentally map out the information you have.
Level one titles are used to name the main sections of the investigation: Method, Results and Discussion. If you need to split this information, then you are looking at a subsection, so you will have to use level two headings, and so on.
Note that you must use two subtitles for each section As minimum. If when making the mental outline of the section you notice that you should only use a subtitle, then the title of the previous level is enough.
About the format of the titles
Knowing the levels of the titles, then you must know what the format of each one is like. In that sense:
- Level 1 title: It is written centered, in bold and each word starts with a capital letter. The text starts in a new paragraph.
- Level 2 title: It is written aligned to the left, in bold and each word starts with a capital letter. The text starts in a new paragraph.
- Level 3 title: It is written aligned to the left, in bold, italics and each word begins with a capital letter. The text starts in a new paragraph.
- Level 4 title: It is written aligned to the left, in bold and each word starts with a capital letter. A 1/2 inch (1.27 cm) indent is used and ends with a full stop. The text starts on the same line.
- Level 5 title: It is written aligned to the left, in bold, italics and each word begins with a capital letter. It is indented 1/2 inch (1.27 cm) and ends with a full stop. The text starts on the same line.
to take into account
In addition to the aforementioned guidelines, the following points must be taken into account for titles:
- Throughout the text it is used double line spacing. That includes titles.
- They don't add up blank lines (enters) above or below headings, they even stay at the bottom of the page.
- The same font and number are used as the rest of the text.
- Titles are not tagged with numbers or letters.
About the titles of the introduction
Another important point about titles concerns the introduction. Until recently, it was customary for undergraduate projects and scientific research to begin with an introduction that was designated with the literal title "introduction."
Currently, the norm indicates that the title is not written, but that the first paragraphs are understood as an introduction. Of course, if you need to use subtitles in your introduction, you must do it as if it were a level 2 title (or the one that corresponds).
The difference with the labels
Very similar to titles are tags. According to the APA format they are reserved for the sections: author's note, abstract, paper title, reference page, footnotes, and appendices.
The main difference with the titles is the format in which it is written: they are placed on a separate line from the main text, in bold and centered on the page and at the top.
make it simpler
Although you could put the format of each level of the titles, programs like Word y Google Docs they make your life easier, allowing you to save each style of the level and apply it again with a click.
It is the styles function, and you will see that once you use it, writing each section will be much faster, easier and you will not make mistakes with the format, since you will have already used it.
In addition, the function allows you to generate a table of contents that can be useful to review your work.
The important of the titles
As we already mentioned, the titles in APA standards they are extremely important because they give a kind of outline of the content of the investigation.
Being very long investigations, readers can quickly access a section and find exactly the information that is relevant to them, without the need to read everything you have written.
Just as you do when you research books, other degree projects and other texts, guiding yourself by the titles makes your work much easier, because you get directly to that point that really interests you.
If it is a common reader, the titles are like a kind of rest for everything you are reading. Imagine reading a text that leaves no room for rest. You would end up agitated and without really understanding what you have before your eyes, because there is no time to digest the information.
Many choose to write as it arises and although we are not against these practices, we recommend making a preliminary outline of how you are going to organize the information in your scientific article or degree work. Once you have this determined, the work of writing will be much easier for you.
Divide your information into titles and subtitles in advance and you will see how your next task will be a kind of "fill in the blanks", since you will only have to write the information in the corresponding place. Sure, it's quite possible that more information will emerge in the process, and that's okay: the initial mental sketch of your investigation is not a straitjacket.