ASA Format Guide for Writing a...

Sure, you’ve heard of APA but have you heard of ASA? Probably not.

ASA is the American Sociology Association.

It's a citation style that we use to write sociology papers. This means that there are a set of rules that we need to follow to write a paper in ASA format.

Ok, so there are two types of rules here. Any essay writer needs to take care of the format of the paper and its citations. Both of these need to be done in ASA style.

But what is the ASA style? What are the rules here? Well, let's have a look at them, shall we?

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Formatting rules!

Formatting rules usually include things like what type of font you need to use, the margins, the title page, and things like that.

It's basically the way in which you adjust your document to make it look professional.

Here are a few formatting rules…

Rule #1: The Text

The text in ASA format has to be double-spaced, which means its line spacing must be set at 2.0.

Other than this, the font must be Times New Roman or Times and it should be set at size 12. When I write my essay, I ensure that these small details are followed as it makes an essay look super professional.

Oh, and you also have to make sure that your margins are set at 1.25 inches exactly.

It may not seem like it but these things matter in the end.

Rule #2: Title Page

Believe me, even the title page has so many rules in ASA.

For example, the title page must be entirely separate. Other than the title of the paper, it must also include things like the name of the author or authors along with institutional affiliations.

Additionally, the word count is also mentioned on the title page, along with a brief author’s note.

Once you put these in, then your title page is complete.

Rule #3: Quotations

Ah! Quotes. Yes, there are rules for them too.

So, the whole document has to be double-spaced, with no questions asked. But, if you use block quotes, then they must be single-spaced, without quotation marks.

Oh, and block quotes are longer quotes that are more than 4 lines.

If you use short quotes, then you can just enclose them in quotation marks and continue in double-space.

Citations!

Citations include the references that we have used in our paper. The thing is that they need to be written in a certain way.

So, in comes the ASA format, which tells us HOW we should add references to our paper.

Here are some basic citation rules…

Rule #1: The Basics

So, what are the basic rules of citations?

Well, there is only one. Whenever you cite something, you need to mention the author’s name and the year of publication.

What is the year of publication here? Well, the text that you are citing must come from some document, right? Then you need to mention the year in which this document was published.

It should look something like this: (Bond 1997).

Rule #2: Multiple Authors

Ok so (Bond 1997) works when you have 1 author. But what if… your document is written by multiple people? What happens then?

Then you need to remember two rules.

First, you need to check if the document has 3 authors or more. If it has three authors, then you can just write their name and year (Bond, Smith, and Black 1998) the first time, and the later citations will be added (Bond et al. 1998).

But if it has more than 3 authors then you will mention one writer followed by the phrase, “et al.”

Rule #3: Same Author Multiple Works

Sometimes, you find multiple documents or articles that talk about the same thing but they are all written by the same writer.

What do you do then?

Well, you can use different documents of the same author as long as you know how to cite them. So, here is how it goes.

In your paper, you just mention that According to Bond (2005, 2007), and then mention what Bond has said.

Rule #4: Citation with Quotes

By now you must have gathered this: quotes have rules. But this rule is really simple.

If you have used a quote in an ASA format paper then you will have to add the page number of the quote along with the author's name and date. Like so, (Bond, 1997: 5).

If you are referring to a website article with no page numbers, then you can mention the paragraph number here.

Rule #5: Reference Page

The last thing that you need to know is how to write a reference page in ASA format.

This is the last page of your paper and it will contain all the references that you have used in the paper.

It will look something like this:

Mason, Karen. 1974. Women's Labor Force Participation. Research Triangle Park, NC: National Institutes of Health.

Similarly, for a journal article, the author’s name comes first, followed by the date, the name of the article in inverted commas, the name of the journal in italics, followed by volume, issue, and page numbers.

For example,

Macan, Therese Hoff. 1990. "College Students' Time Management: Correlations With Academic Performance and Stress." Journal of Educational Psychology. 82 (4): 760-68.

So, here is how it goes.

If all of this is confusing and you have no idea what I am talking about then do this; contact an essay writing service and tell them to write you a paper in ASA format. It’s as simple as that.

They will do the formatting and the citations for you. Then you can learn how to really write in ASA.