Formatting conventions

EAP APA Glossary Grammar Vocabulary Presentation skills

When you produce a piece of academic writing, you need to consider a number of things. First and foremost: for every source you use, you need to cite this in the text of your document (“in-text”) and then provide a full reference to it in a list of references at the end of your text (“post-text”). Secondly, the document must be formatted in a certain way (e.g. font type, font size, line spacing, margin size &c. &c.).

APA (American Psychological Association) is often used to cite and reference sources that you use in your academic writing (an author-date reference style); another common formatting style is Chicago (CMS). They both provide a comprehensive set of formatting and styling rules (the layout and structure of your writing) as well as providing guidance on other aspects of the academic writing process, inter alia, plagiarism, tone of language, construction of tables and graphs &c.

American Psychological Association (APA)
More details—a PDF guide covering the key citation and referencing aspects—and practice materials relating to the APA format and style convention:

Chicago Manual of Style (CMS)

More details—a PDF guide covering the key citation and referencing aspects—and practice materials relating to the CMS format and style convention: