Basic Guide to APA-Style Writing

As you know, APA stands for American Psychological Association, a group that publishes a guide for technical writing in the social sciences. This guide is known as the APA Publications Manual, 5^th Edition. This is an author’s bible. It includes exactly how to prepare a manuscript for publication in any one of the social sciences. Many of you are probably familiar with MLA-Style from English courses. Both styles are similar, but also different. For any manuscript that you write in a psychology course you MUST use APA style. If you would like a copy of the APA manual you can obtain it directly from the APA: http://books.apa.org/books.cfm?id=4200060, or Amazon.com. The price of the manual is $28. Believe me it is well worth it to have a copy. Many courses and professions, not just those related to the social sciences, use this style of technical writing rather than MLA, because the APA manual is not revised and re-published as often.

Okay, now onto some tips. I have only two tips to give here and they are interrelated. The tips deal with using your own words and doing your own writing, and then making sure that you cite any material that was not our own idea.

The first tip is to use your own words. There is nothing more disconcerting than for a professor to read a “student’s work” only to find out that it had been published before and the student reproduced a word-for-word account. This is known as plagiarism. I define plagiarism as “not citing someone else’s work any time you include a thought, statement or idea in your writing that is not your own.”

PLAGIARISM IS UNETHICAL AND CAN RESULT IN DISMISSAL FROM THE UNIVERSITY OR EVEN GREATER LEGAL CONSEQUENCES.

Most people think that plagiarism is simply “cutting and pasting” someone else’s work and pretending it is your own. True, this is a form of plagiarism, probably the most severe. But plagiarism also occurs when you paraphrase someone else’s idea or empirical finding that you read somewhere and do not cite that person’s work. Thus, even if you do not “cut-and-paste” someone’s work, if you use their idea without citing their work, this is plagiarism. Please note: This is probably the most common form of plagiarism that people commit; hence, it is very easy to catch. If you think that you should cite it, do it!

It is more productive and educational for you to try to put the material you’ve read and thought about into your own words. Paraphrase and weave your ideas into what you have read. Don’t simply copy someone else's words. Sometimes it seems that something you've read cannot be said any better than the original author has said it. Great! Some people do have a gift for writing. These are the statements you place in quotation marks, or otherwise cite as having come directly from another source. [See the examples provided below.] However, this type of citation should make up less than 5% of your entire paper, if you want to include any at all. That is, do not include direct quotations on every other line of your paper! This overuse suggests that you have not taken the time to read the relevant material, think about what it all means, and try to put it into your own words. Note, in the several thousand pages that I have written, I have probably used no more than three direct quotations totaling about five lines of actual text.

Okay, if the first tip is to use your own words, then the second tip is to make sure that you properly cite and reference the material that you use in a paper. Remember, if you are using someone else’s idea, even if it is in your own words, it is a good idea to cite it. When writing in APA-Style, you MUST provide complete citations for work mentioned and a complete reference at the end of the paper. Below are some examples of properly cited material:

Within-Text Citations (paraphrased material):

. . . . . . . . as discussed by Jones (1991). . . . . .

According to Smith (1984), . . . . . . .

. . . . .is a well-known theory (Cage, 1980; Hughes & Ho, 1973).

. . . .language disorders (for a review, see Volkman, 1986).

Taylor and Cummings (1932) reported that . . . . . .

Within-Text Citations (quotations):

He stated, “The ‘placebo effect’ disappeared when behaviors were studied in this manner”

(Smith, 1982, p. 276), but he did not clarify which behaviors were studied.

Smith (1982) found that “the ‘placebo effect’ which had been verified in previous studies in this

manner” (p. 276).

Used the following for a direct quotation of more than 40 words:

Smith (1982) found the following:

The "placebo effect" which had been verified in previous studies,

disappeared ...{Actual quotations will include all of the words!}

studies were clearly premature in attributing the results

to a placebo effect. (p. 276).

Sources Listed in a References Section:

Cage, T. M. (1980). Language and communication. New York: Adams.

Hughes, L. J., & Ho, C. (1973). Language development. Journal of Social Issues, 37, 1-7.

Jones, L. (1991). The theory of language evolution. Journal of Language, 23, 142-67.

Smith, H. (1984, December). Do babies sing a universal song? Psychology Today, pp. 70-76.

Taylor, S., & Cummings, C. R. (Eds.). (1932). Bilingual education and teaching. New York: Praeger.

Volkman, J. T. (1986). Contemporary issues and new directions in adult education. In L. W.

Fraser (Ed.), Learning in adults (pp. 27-346). New York: Springer.

A Few Other APA-Style Tidbits:

1) The manuscript should be double-spaced throughout and left-justified. An exception is a quotation of more than 40 words, which is single-spaced and centered.

2) Use 12-pt font throughout, except for tables and figures, which can be any font greater than 8-pt.

3) Use a header at the top of the page and right-justified.

4) An APA-Style manuscript should include the following sections in this order:

a. Title Page

b. Abstract (About 150-200 Words)

c. The Main Text (The “meat” of the manuscript)

d. A References Section

There are other parts (footnotes, tables, figures, etc.) that or may not be included, depending on the manuscript.

5) Margins should be 1” (2.54 cm) on top and bottom, and either 1” (2.54 cm) or 1.5” (3.81 cm) on the left and right. I prefer 1” all around.

6) The references section should be labeled References (not “bibliography”, or “works cited”).

7) All section headings (e.g., Abstract, References) should be centered.

Click here to link to a paper that I authored and is in press in a very prestigious journal. Use this as a guide for proper APA-Style.

Below, I list some good websites for APA-Style tips

http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

http://www.docstyles.com/apa101.htm

http://www.docstyles.com/archive/apacrib.pdf

http://www.uwsp.edu/PSYCH/apa4b.htm