The perfect research paper format

The Perfect Research Paper FormatThree Popular Styles to format your Research Paper

Popular Research Paper Format Styles

• MLA Style• APA Style• Chicago Style• Harvard Style• CBE Style• CGOS Style

MLA Style Research Paper Format

• Leave one-inch margin at the top, bottom, left and right of the 8.5” X 11” page while taking printout.

• Choose 'Times New Roman' as the font with '12' as the font size.

• Keep everything aligned to the left.

• Double space the entire research paper, including notes, quotations, and list of citations.

• Indent first line of a paragraph or a quotation half an inch from the left margin to set them off.


• There is no title page needed in the Research Paper.

• On the top of the first page, type:

• Your Name

• Your Instructor's Name

• Your Course Number

• Date

• Then, type the Title of the Research Paper in a new line, and center it. Do not format it in any way.

• Do not use a period after the title or any heading in the paper.


• After the title or a heading, you can start writing the text in a new, double-spaced line - indenting the first line of the paragraph.

• Page numbers should be mentioned in the upper right-hand corner of the page, half an inch from the top - aligned to the right margin. Page numbers should be in the following format:

<Your last name>space<page number>

• Begin your Citations list on a new page, at the end of the paper.

• Begin each entry aligned to the left margin. If it continues in more than one line, indent all subsequent lines half-an-inch from the left margin.


• Insert a table close to the text it relates to. Label it as:

Table <Number of the table in the research paper>

<Caption of the Table>

• Give source at the end of the table. If you want to include notes to the table, use lowercase letters rather than numerals.

• Any other illustration, photograph, map, line drawing, graph or chart is labeled as:

Figure <Number of the figure in the research paper>

<Caption of the Figure>

APA Style Research Paper Format

• Leave one-inch margin at the top, bottom, left and right of the 8.5” X 11” page while taking printout.

• Choose 'Times New Roman' as the font with '12' as the font size.

• Double space the entire research paper, including the Title Page.

• In the header of each page, include the title of your paper (or its shortened version) in all capital letters aligned to the left, and the page number aligned to the right margin.

• The title of the paper in the header should not exceed 50 characters, including spacing and punctuation.


• In APA style, research paper should have four major sections - Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References.

• On the Title Page:

• Start with the header as mentioned above.

• Mention the title in the upper half of the page. It should be not more than 12 words long and should be centered on the page.

• Beneath the title, type the author's full name (without any titles).

• Beneath the author's name, type the institutional affiliation of your research work.

• Abstract should begin from the new page. It should include the header and:

• On the first line of the page, center the word 'Abstract'. Do not boldface, underline, italicize or format it in any way.


• Your abstract should be between 150 to 250 words, and is a concise summary of your research paper.

• The text should start from the new line and must include your research topic, research questions, participants, methods, results, data analysis and conclusions. Do not indent the text.

• Below it, type Keywords: in italics, and list your keywords. It will help other researchers to find your paper easily in databases.

• References list should be included at the end of the paper. Each entry in the list must be cited in your text too.

• Begin it from a new page, and label it as 'References' (without any formatting).


• Each entry on your list should be indented half-an-inch from the left margin.

• Author's name should have the last name first. Each entry can include up to seven authors. If the work citied has more than seven authors, use ellipses after the names of first six authors, and then include the name of the last author. The authors should be mentioned in the alphabetical order (according to their last names).

• The journal title should be mentioned in full, maintaining the capitalization and punctuation as mentioned in the original title.

• Capitalize all major words in the journal titles, but when referring to chapters, articles or webpages, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the title, subtitle, and the first word after a colon or a dash.

Chicago Style Research Paper Format

• Margins of the page should not be less than 1” and not be greater than 1.5”.

• Times New Roman in 12 pt font size works well in this format too.

• Text needs to be double-spaced, except for block quotations, table titles, figure captions, notes, and bibliographies (which need to be single-spaced. )

• Include an extra line space immediately before and after a block quotation. Do not use quotation marks for block quotations.

Chicago Style Research Paper Format• The entire block quotation should be indented half-an-inch from the left margin.

• Leave an extra line between notes and bibliographic entries.

• Include Page Numbers in Arabic in the header from the first page of the text.

• For long research papers, use sub-headings. Do not end them with periods, and include an extra line just before and after sub-headings.

• Be consistent in your writing style.


• On the Title Page, centre the title one-third way down the page. Put a colon after the title and add the sub-title on the next line. Include your name and class information in the bottom-third of the page.

• Titles mentioned in the text, notes or bibliography should be capitalized in headline-style.

• Italicize the book and periodical titles.

• Enclose the titles of articles or chapter in quotation marks.

• Label the page where you list your sources as ‘References’ for including them in Author-Date style, and as ‘Bibliography’ for including them in Notes-and-Bibliography style.


• On the References or Bibliography page, leave two lines between the label and the first entry. Leave one blank line between each entry.

• Mention all entries in alphabetical order.

• Mention names of all authors up to three authors. For more authors, mention the name of the first author and add ‘et al.’ after that.

• In Chicago –style research paper format, there are five heading levels:• Level 1 is centered, boldface or italicized, and has headline-style capitalization.

• Level 2 is centered, regular type, and has headline-style capitalization.

• Level 3 is aligned to left, boldface or italicized, and has headline-style capitalization.

• Level 4 is aligned to left, roman type, and has sentence-style capitalization.

• Level 5 is placed at the beginning of paragraph with no blank line after it, has terminal period, boldface or italicized, and has sentence-style capitalization.

Thank You!

We hope that this presentation has been able to help you with learning about the basics of formatting your research paper.

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The perfect research paper format