Formatting programs for papers?

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Hi everyone- I am wanting to know who uses a formatting program for your APA papers, and which one/how much did you spend?

i have done a few classes in my program already, but i will be doing MANY more papers, and I already spend WAY too much time struggling with getting all the APA 'rules' met!

i am wondering if a formatting program would be helpful, and how exactly do they work?

thanks!

Specializes in Internal Medicine.

PERRLA was easily one of the best investments I made in school. Made APA an afterthought when it was one of the things I was more aprehensive about when starting my program. I finished my program a few weeks ago with a 4.0 and never got a single point deduction on any paper for incorrect APA formatting, which was often at least a quarter of the grade. In undergrad several years ago I felt like I spent just as much time plowing through the APA manual as I did writing the paper. I wish PERRLA was around then.

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Specializes in psychiatric.

Definitely PERRLA for under grad and currently Grad school. I also use this website quite a bit as well Citefast automatically formats citations: APA 6th edition, MLA 7th ed. and Chicago 16th ed.

Money well spent for the time and effort saved.

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Specializes in Geriatrics/family medicine.

I will too look into Perla, but if you aren't comfortable or allowed to use it for your program, the book APA made easy was reccomended to me by a friend, it is helpful, and shows how to format your paper step by step

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Specializes in Emergency, ICU.
Yea..:) PERRLA is it! .....get it and you'll be glad you did... You just have to go through the installation process and how to use it and you are good to go.The amazing thing is that it stores your references so that you don't have to redo it again, you can just go to your saved reference list and pull whichever ones you need to reuse again. It's been a very time-saving and useful tool for me...

Microsoft Word stores your references too and actually learning APA takes a couple of papers! I can't believe people waste money on software when you can create your own APA template in less than 5 minutes.

But, hey, I like having control of my work. I can't trust anyone else to do it as well I do and I can't trust some overpriced software to get all the nuances of the digital references we now use. No way.

Sent from my iPhone -- blame all errors on spellcheck

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Our instructors recommended Reference Database. It costs $30 for a year and I have been using it the past 2 semesters. I like it, but have also heard PERRLA was good too. I would highly recommend getting one of them. While APA gets easier as you go along, my instructors said "why", they use in for articles and papers as well.

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PERRLA really is the "gold standard" when it comes to APA software. My wife used PERRLA for her capstone paper and bribed me to review it multiple times. Then, just to be sure, she sent it off to a thesis review service that she found on line. For about $75 (they charge by the number of pages) one of their "APA experts" would proofread your paper and send it back to you, with corrections, within 24 hours. In the course she was taking more than three APA errors would result in an automatic 10% grade reduction. Since this paper counted for 40% of the final grade there was a lot riding on formatting. The review service did not catch any errors, but their "expert" did suggest two changes that actually would have resulted in errors! The bottom line is: Buy PERRLA and trust it, but there is still no substitute for diligent proofreading.

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Specializes in Geriatrics/family medicine.

thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge whether it be for a msn program or writing research articles this information is very vital to success

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Microsoft Word stores your references too and actually learning APA takes a couple of papers! I can't believe people waste money on software when you can create your own APA template in less than 5 minutes.

But, hey, I like having control of my work. I can't trust anyone else to do it as well I do and I can't trust some overpriced software to get all the nuances of the digital references we now use. No way.

Sent from my iPhone -- blame all errors on spellcheck

Unfortunately i do not call buying perrla a waste of money. It is a money and time saver for me. I would rather spend more time on content items for my program than sit for hours trying to format papers. Sorry.You call it whatever you wish- overpriced, no trust, lack of control, etc, it is ok... lol

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Unfortunately i do not call buying perrla a waste of money. It is a money and time saver for me. I would rather spend more time on content items for my program than sit for hours trying to format papers. Sorry.You call it whatever you wish- overpriced, no trust, lack of control, etc, it is ok... lol

Also remember spending too much time on the formatting of papers. Toward the end of my program one of the instructors recommended a program, probably PERRLA in its infancy. Way back then I did not even have a computer to do papers on, was typing them on an electric typewriter the hard way.

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Specializes in Emergency, ICU.
Unfortunately i do not call buying perrla a waste of money. It is a money and time saver for me. I would rather spend more time on content items for my program than sit for hours trying to format papers. Sorry.You call it whatever you wish- overpriced, no trust, lack of control, etc, it is ok... lol

But that's the point, formatting doesn't take hours if you know APA. I don't spend hours formatting, I just type my papers and follow APA guidelines. It's easy and logical to me. APA I mean. I just don't find it hard at all and never understood why people have such a hard time with it.

Sent from my iPhone -- blame all errors on spellcheck

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.

If you just think abstractly for a minute and stop thinking concretely from a personal point of view, it's easy to see why these programs are beneficial to lots of people. Sure we could all learn this stuff. But the majority of people (myself included) would rather enjoy life instead of obsess over the details of proper APA format.

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Specializes in Critical Care & Acute Care.

Owl at Purdue and that is about all you need. Make an APA template with margins set, running head, title, and everything and save it as a template. Then just select all and copy and paste it to a new paper so everything is already set and you are ready to type.

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