essay correct margins

Use 1-inch margins on every side of the page for an APA Style paper.

However, if you are writing a dissertation or thesis , your advisor or institution may specify different margins (e.g., a 1.5-inch left margin to accommodate binding).

Margins are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Section 2.22 and the Concise Guide Section 1.21

Related handout

• Student Paper Setup Guide (PDF, 3MB)

From the APA Style blog

APA Style student papers webinar

A new APA Style webinar, “A Step-by-Step Guide for APA Style Student Papers,” taking place on September 10, 2020, will provide detailed guidance on creating, formatting, and organizing APA Style student papers.

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APA Sample Paper

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This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Note:  This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), which released in October 2019. The equivalent resource for the older APA 6 style  can be found here .

Media Files: APA Sample Student Paper  ,  APA Sample Professional Paper

This resource is enhanced by Acrobat PDF files. Download the free Acrobat Reader

Note: The APA Publication Manual, 7 th Edition specifies different formatting conventions for student  and  professional  papers (i.e., papers written for credit in a course and papers intended for scholarly publication). These differences mostly extend to the title page and running head. Crucially, citation practices do not differ between the two styles of paper.

However, for your convenience, we have provided two versions of our APA 7 sample paper below: one in  student style and one in  professional  style.

Note: For accessibility purposes, we have used "Track Changes" to make comments along the margins of these samples. Those authored by [AF] denote explanations of formatting and [AWC] denote directions for writing and citing in APA 7. 

APA 7 Student Paper:

Apa 7 professional paper:.

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Home / Guides / Writing Guides / Paper Types / How to Write an Essay

How to Write an Essay

So you’ve finished writing your essay. Now you can breathe a sigh of relief, close down your computer, and head out to celebrate with friends, right? Right! But after you’ve enjoyed that movie or milkshake, take a few more minutes to give your paper a final look before you hand it in. Doing so could help you avoid critical errors or weak organization that could eat away at your grade.

Guide Overview

• Reread the assignment
• Perfect the pacing
• Correct simple mistakes
• Avoid plagiarism
• Learn for next time

1. Reread the assignment

It’s easy to get carried away when writing an essay. You’ve had an idea that you’re excited about, the words start to flow, and soon you’re congratulating yourself on a job well done. However, while being grabbed by an idea is great, writing in the throes of inspiration can also mean mistakes. These could include not actually answering the question or interpreting the essay prompt properly, including information that isn’t relevant to the prompt, or being so focused on getting it done that you don’t include enough content to support your argument fully.

Make sure to check your essay against the original assignment and ask yourself: Does my paper truly and completely answer this question?

2. Perfect the pacing

Getting the pacing wrong could mean an essay that’s rambling, disjointed, lacking in essential detail, or just not engaging. Check that your paper is properly paced and book-ended by a clear introduction and conclusion.

As a general guide, the introduction and conclusion should each form around a fifth of your essay, with the essay body making up three-fifths. Check that your word count roughly fits these margins to get a perfectly paced essay. If it doesn’t, consider whether a section has too much detail or not enough. In the case of a long introduction, for example, is all of the information necessary? If so, should some of it be in the first paragraph of the paper body instead? A simple edit is often all that’s needed to correct pacing problems, resulting in an essay that flows much better.

3. Correct simple mistakes

Thoroughly proofreading can help ensure your essay is free of grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes you might have missed the first time. Nothing’s worse than losing points for small errors! So take the time to reread your essay with fresh eyes, or ask a friend or writing tutor to take a pass.

Citations can be the trickiest part of formatting. Make sure you’re citing in the correct style for your subject. If you’re unsure, ask your teacher, professor or TA. MLA style (Modern Language Association) and APA style (American Psychological Association) are among the most popular styles, with the former favored by humanities subjects and the latter favored by science subjects. Formatting guidelines for APA, MLA and Chicago style format can be found online, if your teacher doesn’t provide them.

4. Avoid plagiarism

It’s vital that any material you quote or paraphrase within your essay be properly referenced using the required citation format. Failure to reference your sources, even unintentionally, amounts to plagiarism, which can lead to a failing grade or an even more severe sanction from your school. When you check your essay, remember that even ideas that you haven’t directly quoted need to be referenced.

Look back through your source material or your notes as you check your essay. This will enable you to clearly see if you’ve used any material unintentionally, without referencing the source.

Actually creating the citations for a works cited page (or an annotated bibliography ) should be the easy part. After you’ve verified the correct citation style for your class, make sure you have all the required information, then feed that information into the EasyBib citation generator. You’ll also need to create in text citations that correlate to the full citations listed on your works cited page .

5. Learn for next time

Hopefully, the above final checking process should result in a good grade. But whatever the outcome, use it as an opportunity to gather feedback and make improvements on your next essay. If you’re disappointed with your grade, or don’t understand the feedback your teacher has given you (or if they haven’t given any), don’t be afraid to approach them to discuss where you went wrong and how you can prevent losing points in the future.

EasyBib Writing Resources

Writing a paper.

• Academic Essay
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• College Admissions Essay
• Expository Essay
• Persuasive Essay
• Research Paper
• Thesis Statement
• Writing a Conclusion
• Writing an Introduction
• Writing an Outline
• Writing a Summary

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You have a heavy workload, and the last thing you need to do is waste time staring at an essay you’ve just spent hours writing. Proofreading your own work – especially when you’re tired – allows you to find a few mistakes, but some errors inevitably go unnoticed no matter how much time you spend re-reading what you’ve just written. The Ginger Essay Checker lightens your workload by completely eliminating the need for hours of tedious self-review. With Ginger’s groundbreaking Essay Checker, a vast array of grammar mistakes and spelling errors are detected and corrected with unmatched accuracy. While most online paper checker tools claiming to correct essays simply flag mistakes and sometimes make suggestions for fixing them, Essay Checker goes above and beyond, picking up on such issues as tense usage errors, singular vs. plural errors, and more. Even the most sophisticated sentence structures are checked with accuracy, ensuring no mistake is overlooked even though all you’ve done is made a single click.

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How to Do a Title Page in MLA Format

Last Updated: September 22, 2020 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD . Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 1,281,170 times.

Many papers are written using MLA style. MLA style normally does not require a cover page because all of the important information is worked into the first page. However, some instructors do prefer a separate title page. In this case, use the following standards.

Title Page Help

Creating a Title Page

• Do not punctuate your title. It does not need to have quotation marks around it, it should not be underlined, and it should not be in italics. If, however, there is a quotation or a reference to a longer work in your title, that should be punctuated accordingly.
• For example, "To Be or Not to Be:" An Analysis of Hamlet's Soliloquy contains a quote, while An Analysis of Inaction in Shakespeare's Hamlet contains the title of the play, which should be italicized.

Community Q&A

• Use a standard 12 point font for all writing. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Use a standard 1 inch (2.5 cm) margin. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Use a standard font with a serif, such as Times New Roman or Garamond. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• All information is written in the same size and font; there is no bold, italics or underlining. Thanks Helpful 22 Not Helpful 5

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• http://homeworktips.about.com/od/mlastyle/ig/Sample-MLA-Pages/titlepage.htm

About This Article

To do a title page in MLA format, start by writing the title of your paper one-third of the way down the page, using normal title capitalization standards and not underlining or italicizing the title. Then, skip 2-3 lines and write your first and last name. Next, skip 2-3 more lines and write the name of the course or class you're writing the paper for. One the next line, write the instructor's name. Finally, on the next line, write the date with the day first, then the month and year. To learn how to punctuate the title on your MLA title page, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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