Students Must Familiarize With All Types of Essay Formats
Learn about main types of essay formats, like APA, MLA and Harvard writing style
As students go higher in their academic career, they must stick to any one of the types of essay formats, as prescribed by their college or university. Since there are four major essay format , namely APA, MLA, Harvard and Chicago essay writing styles, it is advisable that students understand the requirement of each style, so that they can feel confident while writing an essay in any of these formats.
However, students must remember that essay writing style and a recognized format is to give an interesting shape to the essay structure, while making it easy for the readers to understand the external sources used in it and locate the same, whenever required. Nevertheless, there are no restrictions on use of any source, as prescribed by any of the writing styles. Students can use information from e-publications, books, internet sites, journals and magazines to support their viewpoint with the evidential proof from such sources. However, the style of in-text citation and their reference in the bibliography pages are different for various types of essay formats.
Given below is the brief description on important formats. Nevertheless, students need to understand the suitability of each format to the type of essay that they may be preparing. Therefore, it is advisable that students also go through other papers like argumentative essays and persuasive essay , which have used different writing formats.
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MLA (Modern Language Association) format
This format prescribes for essay writing on a letter size paper with one-inch margin left on all sides, typing done in 12 font size, double spaced lining, with an indent of around half an inch. While a header will be centrally located on the title page, giving the name of the project and the writer, pages should be numbered on their right hand corner.
In-text citation should be given, wherever applicable with the name of the author and paragraph/page number of the publication, at the end of the relevant information that has been taken from the particular source. Such references should be detailed in the bibliography pages, giving full address of the source, along with full names of the author and publication.
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APA (American Psychological Association) format
This is one of the commonly used types of essay formats, which students are supposed to follow, while writing their academic papers. While this writing style is similar to the MLA format, it is necessary to write the essay in identifiable parts, like an abstract, cover page, introduction, main essay, conclusion and bibliography.
Here, the in-text citations should mention the surname of the author along with the date of publication of the source, separated by a coma. The bibliography and works-cited pages should be written, with each paragraph starting with a “hanging” style, while the paragraphs in the main essay text should be indented for around half an inch in the first line.
As new essays and research papers should have a proper essay outline students should give due importance to the writing style for outline page, as well.
In addition, students can also check on custom essay for knowing about other types of essay formats.
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Tags: Argumentative Essays, Custom Essay, Essay Format, Essay OUtline, persuasive essay, types of essay formats
