FORMAT OF THE MASTER’S THESIS

We need to consider, through the elaboration of the whole work, reviewing

spelling mistakes before sending the Master’s Thesis for its review, as well as

considering that the whole work is written using an impersonal style (passive voice, third

person rather than first person, things rather than people as subjects of sentences). Besides,

your work must be original, that is, it must be written by you and follow the APA rules of

citation (6th edition). Any assignments with plagiarism will not be evaluated.

In order to submit a work with an APA format we should have some

considerations regarding its features:

(The following features are an adapted summary of the information appearing at:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/. For more information, please check

this link).

Format:

Now we will describe the APA format to write scientific articles, assignments,

thesis or monographies:

Margins: Each side of the page should have 2.54 cm of margin.

Indent: when starting a paragraph, we should apply a first line indent of 5 cm in relation

to the edge of the sheet.

Times New Roman font.

Alignment: The alignment of the main body of the text should be left and double-

spaced.

Page number: It should start in the first page of your work and it should be aligned at

the top of page and to the right.

List of references:

All references should be inserted in the text (never as footnotes) and should always

have the surname of the author/s and the year of publication in parentheses.

If the surname of the author or authors is part of the formal structure of the phrase,

we would only put in parentheses the date; (for example: Jones (1996) found...) If it is not

part of the formal structure of the text; for example: …according to Barbudo (2003).

If there are three, four or five authors, we would include the surnames of every

author the first time they are referenced in the text, and then we would only include the

surname of the same author followed by an “et al.” If there are six or more authors, we

would include the names of the first six authors followed by “et al.” from the very first

reference. If there were several references of an author or authors in the same year, they

will be indicated with the letters a, b, c, etc., after the year (e.g. 1989c).

Short quotations will be included in a phrase between inverted commas, and then,

in parenthesis, the author, the year and the page.

She stated, "Students often had difficulty using APA style" (Jones, 1998, p. 199), but

she did not offer an explanation as to why.

When quotations have 40 or more words, place them in a free-standing block of

typewritten lines, and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, indented

1.3 cm from the left margin.

Example:

Jones's (1998) study found the following:

Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first

time citing sources. This difficulty could be attributed to the fact that many

students failed to purchase a style manual or to ask their teacher for help. (p. 199)

Each and every reference included in the text will appear alphabetically listed

then in the section “List of references” (at the end of your work).

All quotations will be adjusted to the publishing standards of the American

Psychological Association (APA).

Therefore, the list of references will be the section that includes all the sources

necessary to elaborate the written work. It will appear at the end of the written work.

Now, we will include the general rules to elaborate the three basic types of

references, and the references to the material consulted on the Internet:

One author:

Surname, A. A. (Year of publication). Title. Location: Publisher.

Example:

Tyler, P. (1989). Classification of Neurosis. London: Wile.

Two authors:

Surname, I., Surname, I. and Surname, I. (1995). Title of the book. Location: Publisher.

Three to six authors:

Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I. and Surname, I. (Year).
Title of the book. Location: Publisher.

More than six authors:

Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I., Surname, I. et al.

(Year). Title of the book. Location: Publisher.

B) CHAPTERS OF COLLECTIVE BOOKS:

Same rules as in section A are applied.

Authors (Year of publication). Title of the Chapter. In I. Surname, I. Surname and I.

Surname (Eds.), Title of the book (pp. 125-157). Location: Publisher.

Surname, A. A. and Surname, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of the Chapter. In A. A.

Surname (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. nn-nn). Location: Publisher.

Singer, M. (1994). Discourse inference processes. In M. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook

of Psycholinguistics (pp. 459-516). New York: Academic Press.

C) ARTICLE IN JOURNAL:

Author/s (Year of publication). Title of the article. Name of the journal, 8(3), 215-232.

Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B. and Surname, C. C. (Year of publication). Title of the

article. Title of the journal, volume (Number), pp-pp.

Example:

Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of

Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896.

D) MATERIAL CONSULTED ON THE INTERNET:

The Internet provides a variety of resources, including scientific papers, magazines,

newspapers, documents of private and governmental agencies, etc. These references

should have at least the title of the resource, the year of publication or date of access and

the URL address of the resource.

Basic format: Author of the page. (Date of publishing or review of the webpage, if

available). Title of the page or location. Retrieved (Date of access), from (URL-web

address).

Example:

Suñol, J. (2001). Facial rejuvenation. Retrieved June 12, 2001, from http://drsunol.com
Other features to consider:

Abstract: It is a summary of the most important elements of the work. Every number

that appears in the abstract, except those that start a sentence, should be written in digit

format instead of using words. The abstract should only have one paragraph that does not

exceed 120 words.

Appendix: Each one of the appendixes will appear in a different page.

Tables: Each one of the tables that appear in the assignment will be numbered and with

a header.

Example:

Table 1. Write the name of the table in cursive.

Images or figures: Each one of the images of the work will need to have also a figure

caption explaining its content.

Example:

Figure 1. Title of the figure or image.

- The first time an acronym appears, you should specify in parentheses what does

this acronym refer to.

- Every decimal number should be written with a point. We recommend to include

only two or three decimals.