APA Formatting: Why You Should Never Use Internet Advice

There are few things more important in a doctoral dissertation than proper APA formatting. Without proper APA formatting, a dissertation will not be considered or accepted, thus APA formatting is essential to any dissertation. APA (American Psychological Association) is commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. It is also one of the most widely used and popular means of formatting.

In a way, APA formatting is a style of writing. APA formatting consists of guidelines, rules and regulations that ensure that written material is presented consistently. Everything within a dissertation falls under the format and thus, everything in a dissertation must be formatted properly. APA formatting guides all aspects of a dissertation including the construction of tables, the selection of headings, the citation of references, the punctuation and abbreviations within the dissertation, the presentation of statistics, etc.

These rules can be daunting to the student who is most-often concerned with the actual dissertation itself—not the way that it is presented! Add to this the fact that most students begin worrying about APA formatting at the very end of their dissertation, and students become very stressed and burdened by the prospect of translating all of their statistics, tables, charts, graphs, etc. into proper APA formatting.

It is understandable why students become so stressed and burdened by the task of transposing all of their research and statistics into APA formatting. The APA formatting book is hundreds of pages long and it details many rules and regulations that students need to follow. These rules and regulations explicitly detail how everything must be documented. Additionally, there are APA rules for formatting information obtained on the web and information obtained using new technologies and because technology is changing continuously, the APA formatting manual cannot keep up with these changes. This again only increases the pressure felt by students as they must then learn how to document their research!

There is help, however, for the student who needs to complete their dissertation in time while following proper APA formatting rules. Unfortunately, students often turn to the wrong source for help. The first place that many students turn to for APA help is the internet. The internet offers guides and tips for writing in proper APA formatting, but these guides and tips do not cover all that there is to be covered. On top of this, researching these guides and using them is often just as time consuming as going through the entire manual of APA formatting. Better help comes in the form of dissertation consultants. Dissertation consultants know all there is to know about APA formatting because they have had extensive experience with APA format. What can take a student days, weeks and months, a dissertation consultant can accomplish in far shorter time. In other words, the best help available is from people who have done it before—and these people are dissertation consultants.

Dissertation consultants do more than help with APA formatting issues, however, as they can offer valuable feedback on the dissertation itself. Proper APA format falls within the bounds of dissertation consultants’ work, but is by no means the only thing that they can help a student with. Dissertation consultants will review the entire dissertation—from the thesis, to the proposal, to the research and the methodology. A dissertation consultant can also be a valuable editor and can offer valuable feedback and help. And, of course, the dissertation consultant will deal with every single APA format issue in the dissertation.