APA Writing Style Resources

[VickyRN]

The American Psychological Association (APA) style is a set of rules or guidelines designed to ensure clarity and uniformity of scientific writing. This publication manual aims to minimize distraction and maximize precision in the writing process. The guide also standardizes nearly every aspect of writing, such as: authorship; headings; bias-free language; punctuation; abbreviations; constructing tables; avoiding plagiarism; and citing references.

The APA documentation style is used for research in science-related fields, whereas the MLA is utilized for research in the liberal arts. There are thousands of peer-reviewed journals, references, and books that use APA as their style guide. APA also provides a format for cross-referencing sources, from citations-in-text to the reference page.

Cross-referencing is of great value to researchers who need to locate original sources for their own research projects. Careful use of APA adds credibility to the writer by drawing upon the authority of the source material. Proper citation of sources in APA can also help the author avoid charges of plagiarism, which is a very serious offense.

APA has been criticized for being choppy and very difficult to master. The 6th edition of APA style has improved significantly from the 5th edition, with simplified heading levels, abstract with key words underneath, author note, seriation for organization of material, and no retrieval dates for citations. The reference page also contains "DOI" designates. The 6th edition is much sleeker in appearance than the cumbersome 5th edition.

A huge challenge in the new 6th edition is creating a unique header on the title page. The 6th edition does not allow the words "running head" in headers from page 2 onward.

Another area of confusion and novelty is the use of "DOI" designates for journal articles and some scholarly books in the reference section of the paper. Digital object identifiers (DOI) are unique strings of numbers and letters to identify scholarly content in the online environment.

Clicking on the DOI that accompanies a citation furnishes the original online journal abstract. The DOI for content material is created and assigned by the publisher. A user-friendly free DOI lookup is provided by crossref.Org.

Here are some resources on APA style that I have found to be of inestimable help over the years:

General apa guidelines - purdue online writing lab

Sample apa paper

Sample Paper: One-Experiment Paper

Sample two-experiment paper

Sample meta-analysis paper

Citing sources using apa manual (6th ED.)

Citing legal materials in apa style

[kokosmom]

While in nursing school, I purchased a software program off the net called "PERRLA" If you need to do a search for this, it should be easy to find. I was never marked down for any of my citings, they always came out right. All you do is answer questions and the software puts it together for you. Awesome stuff! :twocents

[michelle504]

I also wanted to thank you for your very helpful post!

-Michelle;)

[AtomicWoman]

I LOVE the Purdue OWL website, linked to in the first post:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/

I have recommended it to dozens of people. When I am writing a paper, I leave a window open with the OWL site on it. When I have a question, I scroll through OWL and 95% of the time, the answer is there, with a lovely example I can emulate. :)

[carson456]

This is exactly what I have been looking for! Summary. Organized. And links for further reference. Thanks a bunch!