Formatting is the process of visually organizing a piece of writing in a specific order. Formatting addresses font style, size, spacing, alignments, margins, indentation, and lists. Without proper formatting, your essay would be unreadable and not as presentable as an essay should look.
Formatting an essay helps you achieve readability and presentability, consequently helping you achieve your goal for the work. If you are keen on getting excellent grades, pay attention to essay formatting, as it goes a long way in helping your essay look professional and impress your readers.
There are different formatting styles, including MLA, APA, ASA, and IEEE. These specific formatting styles are used for various disciplines and fields. The ASA paper style format is the accepted standard in sociology.
The ASA paper format is suitable for writing papers for colleges and universities. It specifies the arrangement and punctuation of footnotes, the bibliography, and the style of the paper.
The full meaning of "ASA" is the American Sociological Association. This format is mainly used in the humanities and social sciences. While this format is optional for other fields in the humanities and social sciences, papers written in sociology must be specifically written in this format.
ASA formatting is one of the world's most widely used and accepted paper formatting styles. This formatting style makes your work appear highly professional and well-organized. The ASA format style is explicitly used for sociology papers.
Sociology papers examine society and societal life. Sociology aims to explain social phenomena, such as institutions, group dynamics, or social norms or activities. As a result, studies in sociology will emphasize social consequences rather than those at the individual level. Such papers include communities and communal living, citizenship and social obligations, ecosystems, and what society can do to protect the earth. All these are examples of sociology papers for which ASA paper formatting applies.
The web-based Google Docs Editors suite contains a free online word processor called Google Docs. Google Docs users can collaborate in real-time while creating and editing documents online. The user tracks each edit with a revision history showing changes. Being a document creation tool, most papers are written via Google Docs. This section explains how to do the ASA paper format in Google Docs.
The ASA paper format style applies to both Word documents and Google Docs. To use this format in Google Docs, start with the title page, as this is the first page that your reader comes across. The ASA paper guideline has strict rules that the title page must adhere to.
When using the ASA paper format in Google Docs, it is essential to follow specific page numbering. Several unique features in Google Docs make formatting relatively easy. This is one reason the ASA formatting style would be easy to pull off in Google Docs.
In the ASA formatting in Google Docs, there are blocked quotes. Quotations of forty words or more are blocked. The entire quote is single-spaced and indented one-half inch from the left. No quotation marks are used.
These are usually introduced in the regular text with the author’s name, the year of publication, and a colon. Adhering to these formatting rules is essential to making your paper look presentable and orderly. As mentioned earlier, the formatting can contribute substantially to how well you are graded.
In Google Docs ASA Paper Format, there are strict rules regarding references, citations, and bibliographies. This set of rules should be strictly followed to ensure that the paper can pass the ASA Paper Formatting Style.
The ASA paper header and title page are very important in your paper because they are the first pages to be seen by the readers. It is essential to follow the ASA paper formatting rules strictly.
The ASA formatting style for your paper includes the full title, which is closely followed by an asterisk. After that, you input your name (s) and the institution (s) of the author (s). You also have to include a complete word count, a running head, and a title footnote with the name and address of the author (s). You then include the acknowledgments, credits, and grant information (if you have any).
In writing your title page, the paper should be double-spaced throughout. When choosing a paper, the title page is the first thing one notices. You are responsible for making it look sharp and following all the rules to appear presentable and professional. This is where the ASA paper formatting style comes into play. Using the ASA paper writing format style guide, you can make your paper look very well organized and aligned.
To format your paper using the ASA style, strictly follow these header and title page specifications unless otherwise instructed. Here is how to write an ASA paper header.
Another vital part of your ASA paper format requirement is the work cited page. In the ASA formatting style, there are guidelines for how your works cited page should be formatted. Failure to adhere to these rules can attract severe penalties that significantly affect your paper and grade.
A work cited page is a page that contains all information regarding books, materials, or papers from writers and authors that you consulted, used, or otherwise benefited from while writing the paper. This page is important because it has huge implications for the acceptability of your work in the academic field. Failure to properly cite and include references can lead to plagiarism accusations.
Your Work Cited Page is also known as the Reference Page, and in the ASA paper format, it should start with the word “References.” All references cited in the paper should be listed here and double-spaced. It should also be arranged alphabetically, beginning with the author’s last name.
You should also use hanging indentation, which means the first line is flush left and the subsequent lines are indented one-half inch. Do not use tabs or hard line breaks/returns to achieve this.
Also, the author's name must be inverted, and if there is more than one author, the first author's name should be inverted. When the first author is the same in both single-authored and multi-authored references, place the single-authored references first.
When you include multiple works by the same author (s) from the same year, include letters after the year and list all the references from one author alphabetically. Ensure to include all the authors of the publications. You may not use et al. in the References section.
Apart from the work cited page, in-text citations can be used in the paper. These in-text citations also have a specific format that they should strictly follow. An in-text citation is a brief reference that you should include in the body of your work when writing a paper.
This in-text citation helps to identify your source in the reference list uniquely. It should comprise the author's surname and the year of publication. There are different in-text citation styles; however, we are concerned with the ASA style format in this paper.
In the college ASA style paper format, quotation marks are used when doing an in-text citation. Basic forms for citations in the text include the author's last name(s) and year of publication. Include the page number when you quote directly from the work or refer to specific passages. If the author's name is in the text, follow it with the publication year in parentheses. If the author's name is not in the text, enclose the last name and year in parentheses:
A great ASA paper format example of a text quotation is: In his studies, Lincoln (1851:21) found that…
A typical ASA Paper format style is divided into headings and subheadings. Headings are used for the beginning of each chapter, while subheadings are used for the subtopics in each chapter. This form of division enables the reader to identify the essential topics in your paper. Here is how to do ASA paper format for headings and subheadings.
It is important to note that all primary levels come in capital letters, while the subtopics in each chapter come in italics. Your first-level headings must be left justified (to achieve this, click on the left justify button in your Word document or Google document). In the ASA paper guidelines, it is also important to note that there are three heading levels.
These headings are the first-level heading, the second-level heading, and the third-level heading. Each of these levels has different specifications. While the first-level headings should be written in capital letters and left justified, the second-level headings should be italicized and left justified. All words except prepositions and conjunctions should be capitalized. Third-level headings should only have the first word and any proper nouns capitalized, italicized, indented, and ending with a period.
You must follow the above specifications for your headings and subheadings, as strict adherence qualifies your paper as an ASA-formatted work.
Tables and figures illustrate findings and support conclusions; however, they have different purposes. Both tables and figures are integral parts of a well-written scientific paper. The bulk of the detailed information in a paper is typically presented in its tables.
ASA paper formatting rules for tables and figures are strict and must be followed when a paper is written in ASA style.
Many of the descriptions and basic concepts, key natural trends, fundamental discoveries, and some conclusions are shown in the figures. As you prepare your article, consider whether a figure or a table is more appropriate.
Tables and figures in the ASA paper format are organized in specific ways. You should place tables close to where they are first mentioned in your text, but space them evenly across pages. (Tables in papers submitted for review or publication are placed on separate pages at the end of the paper.) Also, you must label each table beginning with the table number followed by a description of the contents in bold font.
For tables, you should use a table template in your word processor, both for college papers and publications. It is best to use a simple template here. Table line spacing is not addressed in the ASA Style Guide, but other styles permit single-spaced tables, so you can utilize that. Additionally, each row and column should include a heading.
In this style, abbreviations and symbols (e.g., "%" or "nos.") may be used. When writing, do not change the number of decimal places or units of measurement within a column. A zero should be placed before the decimal point when numbers are less than one. If the number is a statistic that cannot exceed one, such as a correlation coefficient of r =.55 or a probability coefficient of p.01, write "0.23" rather than ".23."
Also, notes follow the word “Notes” (in italics) at the bottom of the table. General notes come first, followed by footnotes, and then probability notes.
Footnotes for your tables are labeled "a, b, c, etc." set in superscript because they explain specific details. Probability notes follow footnotes. At [p. xx].05, 01, and 001, respectively, "use asterisks *, **, and *** to indicate statistical significance" (ASA 2007:60).
For Figures, A “figure” may be a chart, drawing, graph, map, or photograph. Research journals dislike publishing figures because they are costly to produce. The requirements are also demanding. What works in a word processor will not work for publication. The ASA Style Guide (2007) instructs authors to use at least 300 dpi resolution for gray-scale (not CMYK) and at least 600 dpi resolution for line art (1200 dpi is preferred).
Do not send 72-dpi “screenshots” or Web GIFs because, while they appear clear on a computer screen, they will reproduce badly in print form. (P. 86). A caption appears below the figure explaining what it is. For instance, the axes of a graph are labeled in a legend within the figure.
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