Formatting

The notes here are for formal academic work such as essays and research papers. For response writing such as posts and comments on this blog, see the page "Blog format". 

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The ruler and other formatting tools in Google Docs
Click to see the image full size. 

What is format? 

Format refers to the appearance, the form, of a piece of writing. It is separate from the content. 

You can see the formatting by looking at a piece of work. There is no need to read it. The formatting is what it looks like, not what it says. 

Formatting covers such things as: 

• the font used 

• the style of font: Calibri, Times, Arial, and so on. 
  For academic work online, a sans serif font such as Calibri is preferred, while printed work often uses a serif font such as Times Roman. 
• the size of the font: 12 point, 13 point, 14 point, and so on. 
  Academic work is typically in size 11 or 12 point. 
• the colour of the text in the font: black, blue, purple, or whatever. 
  Black is normal. 
• and whether the text is bold, italic or struck through. 
  Bold is used in headings. 
  Italic formatting is used for four purposes: 
1. the titles of books, magazines, newspapers, encyclopaedias, films, and similar large works, for example: Skillful 4 Reading & Writing, The New York Times, Wikipedia, The Godfather, and so on.  
2. foreign words, for example: Tourists like to visit Bangkok's famous wats and enjoy a bowl of tomyum kung.  
3. a word being talked about, for example: Cat has three letters. 
4. to add emphasis, although it's usually preferable to use word choice and grammar to do this in academic contexts. 
    

• lines, for which the usual academic style ask us to: 

• indent the first line. 
• Use the ruler tool in Google Docs, MS Word and other apps to set the first line indent. Indent the first line 1.0 cm. 
• Do not use space space space. This causes problems when your work is published. Don't do it.
• It is also best to avoid using "Tab" to indent a first line. It is better to use the ruler tool in your writing app to set first line indents.  
   
• left align text. This does not look as neat as justified paragraph lines, but it is easier to read in A4 or similar page format. 
• Printed newspapers and magazines with narrow columns often use justified lines, but they are not usual in academic work composed in A4 or similar formats. 
• You can see this if you compare, for example, an article in The New York Times online version with the same article in the print version: in the online version, paragraphs are left aligned; in the print version, they are justified. The same can be seen in the Bangkok Post. 
   
• Our written work should normally be left aligned to follow the APA, MLA and other standard academic styles guides. 
   
• give reference citations a hanging first line. That is, the first line of a reference citation should be further to the left than the rest of the lines. 
• The first line of reference citation should overhang by 1.0 cm. Use the ruler tool to set this. 
   
• always let the app you are using automatically break lines.
• "Enter" is used to start a new paragraph or a new reference list entry. 
• Never use "Enter" to start a new line in a paragraph or reference citation. This messes up the formatting. 
   

I normally set appropriate formatting in Google Docs. Please do not change it. 

Correctly formatted 

correctly formatted paragraph and reference citation

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Incorrectly formatted

incorrectly formatted:

• the line alignment is justified, not left aligned = wrong
• the first line of the reference citation is not hanging = wrong