The style manuals
The preparation of a research report is governed by the guiding principles and regulations of detailed ‘style manuals’. A style manual is intended to ensure the consistency of every facet of academic writing, from the level of punctuation to the organizing structure of the manuscript. There are several competing style manuals available and they include the way we cite references in the text, prepare bibliography, design the format of headings, subheadings, figures and tables, use of certain symbols, abbreviations and other special language aspects.
The most commonly used style manual is American Psychological Association [APA style].
Many linguistics journals such as
‘Language Learning’
‘TESOL Quarterly’ and
‘Studies in Second Language Acquisition’
follow this style.
Front matter
According to the guidelines the front matter includes the title, the abstract and in some works the table of contents.
Title. A good title performs two functions:
1) it summarizes the main idea of the work, describing topic and actual variables or issues. So, the title should be informative.
2) a good title needs to be ‘catchy’, that is, attract the readers’ attention.
Abstract. Abstract needs to summarize the research problem and justify why it is worth studying, provide some information about methodology and important results and implications. The APA points out:
Most people will have their first contact with the article by seeing the abstract. Readers frequently decide on the basis of the abstract whether to read the entire article.
There is usually a strict word limit for abstracts – 100-200 words.
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