Importance of Paper Formatting in Graduate School

Graduate School
1

During my undergraduate career, I attended a lower ranked local university and made it through with a 4.0 GPA. When it came to papers (political science was my major), I definitely followed the basics of the style I was writing in (Chicago) but there were definitely rules I never learned and simply didn’t use. I never experienced grading markdowns for this, but I have begun to worry about whether this will hold true for graduate school.

I will be attending the same university, but switching fields into public health (and APA formatting). Obviously, I am going to try and follow the format, but I don’t intend to follow every little rule as they are endless.

I assume they may be stricter, but still I can’t imagine them being too focused on this especially given I attend a lower ranked institution. My fear comes from hearing so many different things, I have a cousin who attended an Ivy and said most professors are not going to nickel and dime you as long as you have a “good” grasp. However, I went through the McNair Scholars program (a federal grad prep for minority/1st gen students) and my advisors there said that it varies and some professors will tank you for a period being out of place.

I understand each place is different as is each major and each professor. In GENERAL though, what has been your experience in these situations. Do you have to be spotless or is it more about having a good grasp and doing smaller revisions?

2

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/1/

Follow the style religiously unless your professor specifically has other requirements. Truly, everything you need to know is right there.

3

The degree of strictness may vary from prof to prof, but you will generally want to adhere to APA guidelines unless otherwise directed. In my program, I format my papers based on the guidelines of one of the top journals in my field, per instructor requests, which requires slight adjustments from APA style. It is worth knowing and following the guidelines of your field not only for good grades, but also for publication purposes. Incorrect formatting and typos look lazy and unprofessional, which may lead to a desk rejection of an otherwise good paper. Professors often feel the same when they see such papers from students. You want to be judged for the quality of your arguments and not detract from them with poor presentation.

I use the site @happymomof1 suggested on occasion. Once you have a well-formatted paper, it is easy to keep reusing that shell for other papers. There are also a lot of reference software options that will format citations for you and can be linked with Word.

I’ll add that you shouldn’t underestimate your faculty based on rankings. There is a different expectation for grad students in general, and profs from less prestigious schools can still be very productive and well-known in their field (or simply be sticklers for rules). Your work should reflect your own skills and work ethic, not the quality you expect from a given program. You will get what you put in to your education, and in grad school, you will need to put forth more of your own effort outside the classroom to succeed.

4

If your program requires APA style then that will be the expectation. It is also a style format that you may need to use post graduate as well. Purdue owl is a great online resource. You can also buy an APA style guide through Amazon or even APA. You can get a hard copy or Kindle version. You will use this resource over and over, it is well worth the expense.

5

Graduate professors do expect you to adhere to the standards for the citation style you use. How nitpicky they are going to be depends. It’s been my general experience that professors expect you to get it right and that they will take off for even small errors, if they notice them. A period being out of place or a missing comma? Ehh, maybe, maybe not. But if you’re consistently putting page numbers or titles or names in the wrong place, then yes, it’ll come out of your grade. Proper referencing is part of writing a paper.

Most professors know the reference structure of the style that their discipline uses from memory, because they spend so much time looking at sources’ citations and references that they have to. The structure is useful, because you know where to look for each piece of information you need when cross-referencing an article. Leaving off specific parts may make it more difficult for a person reading your paper to look up the source material. That’s why learning reference styles is important. But it also means that they are likely to notice if you are always putting the commas in the wrong place.

However, in public health programs, professors often allow you to choose a style; they realize that not all students are from the same field, and they may have learned different styles in college. That means if you are using a different style from the professor, they may be less likely to notice an error. (Chicago is less common in public health.) Some professors will make you use APA, though, particularly because it’s the style of choice in most biomedical/health journals.

But it doesn’t matter, because this is such an easy problem to fix.

Just pick a copy of the style guide for the style you plan to use.

APA Publication Manual: http://www.apastyle.org/manual/ (~$30 list price; cheaper if you try other online retailers or buy used. There’s also a pocket manual that outlines the basics.)
Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ (~$52 new; cheaper if you buy a used copy)

Then when you are writing your papers and need to format specific citations or references in specific ways, just reference the book. That’s what everyone else does.

The OWL at Purdue that someone linked to earlier also has the basics of each style for free.

Why would you not? This is probably the easiest part of writing a paper, because the answers are literally in a book.

6

Absolutely, OWL at Purdue. Also Amazon has concise guides on APA style for about $6 each. Also find a really good paper or book chapter that will help you see tbe rules. Finally, since the APA guide was written on stone and required a stylus, the rules are very similar from edition to edition. Changes are generally related to changes in style and technology.

Get a new copy and personalize it in the margins. Mine is always decorated with little post it notes for very specific information such as ordering articles with one authors, plus. Once you get the hang of it, you cant imagine using another style guide. In fact, when taking notes from a source, record the reference in APA style. Also, record direct quotes in APA style. Using APA, as you gather information helps learn style requirements and makes writing aka typing the paper much easier.

7

I got my B.A. in 1971 (!) and went back to school for an MSW last year. The whole issue of APA style was really hard! These are websites I found useful:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/20090212013008_560.pdf which covers almost everything.
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/sites/default/files//apa_tutorial_slide_handout.pdf

Google is your friend if you are having trouble with the mechanics. I found videos for the mechanics of constructing running heads in Word and in Google Docs. And Word has a template for APA style that may work for you, although I now write my papers in Google Docs and download them as Word files when I think they are done. One more read-through and submit!

For formatting references, you can look up articles you’ve retrieved from your school’s library on scholar.google.com and click on the big quotation mark in the listing, which will give you a pretty good start, although you always have to check the capitalization and italics. Also, my university’s library has a page with links to APA blog posts covering various citation and reference topics, and the results page for the library’s search engine has a tab on the right side for “cite” which also gives reference citations.

Good luck!