An APA format essay follows the American Psychological Association’s style guidelines for citing and documenting sources. According to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, APA format is most commonly used to document sources in papers on topics in the field of social sciences such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Major papers are usually composed of four sections: Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References.
APA format is applied to all textual citations, which are references to work or ideas that don’t originate with the essayist, as well as to the “References” page located at the end of the essay.