Everything You Need To Know About The Standard Research Paper Format

A research paper is a sample of academic writing. What does it mean? It means that it’s written to show the scientific novelty of your investigation. Besides that, it means that you need to compose and format the project in such a way that it meets certain standard demands.

What Are Academic Writing Styles?

There are several most widely used academic writing styles that are normally used for essays, research papers, term paper, etc., depending on their topic and the researched area. For example, social sciences use one specific format, other sciences choose another one. The main difference between the styles is in the way citations and bibliography should be organized and formatted. Sometimes, some academic writing styles demand smaller details like page numbering in a certain way or running heads in the upper part of a page, etc.

What You Need To Know about the Formats?

Everything you need to know is available in special guidebooks that can be found online and offline. In addition to them or as a separate means, you can use samples of other students’ projects that can also be found online and in libraries. If you want, you can turn to your teacher and receive a live explanation with examples. Besides that, your teacher may have specific demands to the organization of your paper. That’s why, whatever format you have chosen, you need to specify all the details with your teacher first.

You need to remember that formatting demands spread over the whole paper, no matter how many and which pages there are. In this light, it becomes clear that you need to find out which pages are demanded by your teacher. For example, a title page is present practically always while an acknowledgements page is sometimes optional. You need to keep all this in mind in case you use a research paper sample that contains all possible pages that can be found within such a project.

In most cases, regular page formatting means the following demands:

• Use a clear easily readable 12pt font like Times New Roman, Helvetica, Calibri, etc. (in case you are not told to use a particular one),


• Double-space the text (unless you are told otherwise in accordance to a certain writing and formatting style) and align it left,


• Leave at least 1-inch margins on each side of a page (sometimes, writing and formatting standards demand bigger margins),


• Use standard paper sheets,


• Give your pages consequent numbers,


• Start each new part of your work from a new page.