Writing a College Paper in APA Format: Tips And Tricks

Formatting is undoubtedly one of the most annoying things about academic writing. Many small regulations and genuinely strange rules turn the process into a headache for students. Most likely, if you are reading this text, you have already lost points for formatting… or are about to lose them.

Don’t worry! We know about your plight and are ready to provide some APA assignment help. Are you ready for some APA format tips and tricks? Let’s go! Just bear in mind that by citations, we mean indirect references (rephrasing) and by quotes direct referencing (a complete repetition of the author’s words).

Tip 1. Learn via an example: Citations that do not mention an/the author/authors in the text

In-text citations in APA format are extremely simple, in our opinion. Using our guide, you will be able to become an expert or, at least, adept writer regarding in-texts within several minutes. So, how do you format them? It’s time to review some important cases.

1. One author: Millions of Americans need professional help with personalized tasks and essays (Jenson, 2012);

1. Two authors: Modern college education is dominated by greedy profit-oriented companies (Legens & Neli, 2013);
2. Three and more authors: English speakers are among the best essay writers, as some research shows (Johnson et al., 2021).
3. No author: Various associations ask you not to buy any custom computers (“IBM and Microsoft warn against custom computers,” 2022).

As you may see, the APA citation framework is easy. You put a name (or some contraction) and then list the year of writing after the comma. A good APA in-text citation can be written on the spot if you know the rules.

Tip 2. Learn via an example: Citations that mention an/the author/authors in the text

This aspect appears to be rather simple too:

1. One author: Jackson (2013), claims that blood pressure elevates when you write negative reviews for different services.
2. Two authors: Ranalf & Kenin (2021), believe that the USA should not provide higher education for free or make it cheap due to elite overproduction.
3. Three authors: Kagare and his colleagues (2018)/Kagare et al. (2018), claim that students who get assistance with writing original papers and essays from scratch have better knowledge of English than the ones who don’t.

Here, the pattern is also relatively simple, as you may see. All you have to do is write the names in a fashion very similar to the preceding examples and put a year in parentheses afterward. If you carefully study this tip, you will have no issues replicating them.

Tip 3. Learn about the key types of quotes via simple examples

Let’s continue with the examples. Using them, you will be able to learn the APA citation style in an extremely fast manner. So, imagine that you have direct quotes and reproduce some text from a website or book review. What should you do? The pattern here is simple.

1. Author/authors not mentioned directly in the text: “Microsoft is the best operating system service company available online,” some experts claim (Jackson et al., 2021, p. 303).
2. Author/authors mentioned directly in the text: Racinsky (2013, p. 304-305) stated in this review that, “This paper is unique because it talks about the service sector from the standpoint of emotions.”

Generally, as you may see, the pattern here is simple. You use the old in-text citation formats (all of the aforementioned regulations work) and then add a page number after a comma. In this way, no inspector would ever attack your paper for being plagiarized. The approach we provide is absolutely legitimate and works in the vast majority of cases.

Tip 4. Don’t hesitate to ask for help

We also believe that a good idea is to consider some form of outside academic help. Many websites today provide quality papers at a relatively low price to their clients. If you are afraid of some big errors in your formatting, the choice is perfect. As a customer, you can ask some professionals to edit your paper and check whether all elements are correct. As a result, it is possible to get a more or less impeccable APA sample that will serve as a perfect guide for your future works.

An order placed at one of the academic help sites can genuinely change your attitude towards the APA format. You will finally see that the framework is far from being difficult despite all the things people say about it. Do we have any recommendations about some specific website in this case? Most certainly. In this case, we recommend AdvancedWriters, the website that provides high-quality writing services to all students by means of processing their “write my paper” requests: order today, and you will get outstanding service.

Tip 5. Use citation generators for the reference lists

One of the greatest mistakes to make regarding APA is the manual creation of the reference lists (the detailed descriptions of the literature that go at the end of your essay). Under no circumstances should you do so. There are many small elements that can easily undermine your reference list. So, what to do instead? Utilize various citation generators. The list of options is rather extensive. Some of the top sites we have found for APA citations include the following destinations (in order of importance; the first one is the best):

1. Citation Machine: great APA citations and almost unlimited size of reference lists;
2. Bibme: good for APA6 and features an unlimited size of reference lists;
3. Citethisforme: has many configuration options for some obscure types of materials but features many limitations regarding the size of the bibliography.

Using them, you can create outstanding citations within minutes. The websites support both manual and automatic citations: you can put some website or DOI links, and the services will find key information independently. All you have to do afterward is double-check whether the citations were indeed correct. At first, you should try consulting the APA guides of Purdue Owl. Once you get sufficiently acquainted with the material, no outside help will be necessary. In short, making references is extremely easy in the current conditions.

All in all, as you may see APA citation format for any college paper is far from difficult. Using the tips above, you can quickly format everything in a proper manner. Just make sure that you’re attentive and closely follow all the rules. In this way, success will be more or less inevitable. Avoid hesitation too: the more you train to use the APA rules, the faster your progress is likely to be regarding all forms of essay writing.