Writing a term paper in the APA format is a breeze if you have a good outline on hand. An outline is basically a plan of writing you create before you start to write so you have a logical map of your paper from top to bottom. This shows that an outline is an absolute necessity when you are planning to write a term paper.
If you have been asked to write an APA style outline, please note this. The APA Publication manual does not have any particular guidelines for the creation of outlines. However, people wishing to stick closely to APA formatting usually adopt the following procedures to create a guideline.
All outlines following APA styling should use double spaced text. The font to be used is Times New Roman with size 12. The paper should have 1 inch margins from all sides.
Your term paper is for school so you will also need to include a Title Page with your outline.
The best outline format that can be used is the alpha-numeric one. This format uses Roman Numerals for headings. Capital letters are used for sub headings. The order of subheadings then follows through to Arab numerals, followed by lower case letters. The order then goes on to the use of Arab numerals in parenthesis.
Another type of popular outline is the full sentence outline. This sort of outline is normally used when submission of an outline is a necessary part of your work for your term paper, dissertation or thesis. A full sentence outline is set up much in the same way as above except that there are full sentences instead of just headings and subtopics.
There is yet another type of outline called the decimal outline but is this one is seldom used.
To help you gain an understanding of the format of an outline, we have included an example below:
To get a better idea, look up samples of great APA outlines online. Use the search string “APA Outline + Your topic” and you will find plenty of examples of your own subject area.