Writing in APA Style

 

Writing in APA style takes practice. What follows are some DOs and DO NOTs. Pay attention to these and your writing will be better and your instructors will get to make fewer comments in your papers—both good things. These are separated into items about:

Writing Style

Citations

References

Other links to writing in APA style include:

Purdue Writing Lab (APA link on the right hand navigation bar)

School of Education APA guidelines

University of Portland Library Citation Help

 

Writing Style

  1. Do not use rhetorical questions. Often writers use rhetorical questions as a device to lead to an explanation. This is a bad idea in research papers because the implication is that you will answer the questions that you ask with the research, even if they are rhetorical.
  2. Avoid ad homonym comments. In APA style the focus is the presentation of ideas. Authors’ names are used to give credit and to establish a path to the original sources. In most circumstances, attention should not be given to the author directly—only his or her ideas. So, authors’ first names, article or book titles, or any description of authors’ positions in life should not be used.
    Poor: John Taylor, a middle school principal and advocate of school reform, has presented a critique of site based councils in his book Unproductive Groupings.
    Better: Four difficulties in managing site based councils have appeared (Taylor, 1998).
  3. To introduce key terms, put them in italic. Italic is used for emphasis. Ironic, slang, or coined expressions are in quote marks. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference.
    Correct: Slavin (1980) first discusses jig-saw cooperative learning.
    When in doubt use italic.
    After a key term has been introduced do not italicize it again
  4. APA requires the use of the serial or Oxford comma. In a series of three or more, the final two items are separated with a comma and a conjunction. This is particularly important when the list items are more complex.
    Wrong: Bob, Sally and Anne attended the meeting.
    Correct: Bob, Sally, and Anne attended the meeting.
  5. Quotations should be used only when an author has used some magnificent turn of phase that you just absolutely need to pass on to the reader. Use them judiciously. Your job is to synthesize what you read, not repeat it. Use them only when the original statement is so well-written and compelling that the statement loses meaning with a summary or paraphrase. Too many direct quotations are hard to read and they leave the impression that you are not conveying original thought.
  6. A sudden break in the flow of a sentence is shown with an em dash. There are no spaces preceding or following an em dash.
    Correct: These two participants—one in the first group and one in the second—were tested separately.
    If you do notwant to learn the keyboard combinations for an em dash (option-shift-hyphen on a Mac), Word can be set in Tools/Auto Correct to convert double hyphens to an em dash.
    Caution! You can over use em dashes very quickly. If you find yourself inserting breaks in sentences frequently, stop.
  7. Because the introduction is clearly identified by its position in the manuscript, it does not carry a heading labeling it the introduction.
  8. Web addresses in the body of the paper or the references should not be active, blue, or underlined.
    Go to Tools/Auto Correct/AutoFormat as you type and remove the check mark from Internet and network paths with hyperlinks. Alternatively, when Word formats an active link, highlight the link and go to Insert Hyperlink. Click on the remove link check box which is toward the bottom of the dialog box.
  9. Do not use etc. If there are more components of a list, then list them.
  10. Try to avoid using parentheses except for citations. If something needs to be in parentheses it is usually because you are trying to add examples or clarification to what you are saying. That information can easily be constructed as a normal part of your paragraph. If it is important to say, say it in a sentence.
  11. No matter how many authors you read who are doing this, do not use indefinite pronouns. The phrase “one can never know…” should be rewritten in a form such as “the individuals involved in the process can never know…”.
  12. Do not forget page numbers. Page numbering starts on the first page even if it is a title page.
  13. Do not refer to yourself in the third person. “This researcher will explore…” Either use a personal pronoun or refer to the research. “This report is an investigation of …” Remember the part about APA being about the ideas and not the authors. This is in the same vein.
    Although APA dictates the use of personal pronouns instead of third person attribution, be cautious if you find yourself referring to yourself too often. In quantitative research researchers seldom refer to themselves. In qualitative there is an expectation that you will talk about your positionality in your study which requires references to yourself.
  14. Although it is difficult for us to accomplish much in our language without using metaphors, use them sparingly if at all. Heavy use of metaphors makes the work seem less well informed and trendy.
  15. Never use the phrase research says, or any version there of, unless it is immediately followed by the citations for the research to which you are referring. Additionally, you would only use the phrase research says if you are talking about multiple pieces of research. Otherwise directly discuss the research to which you are referring.

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Citations

  1. Here is the link to a web version of the APA Citations Index.
  2. Each citation should have an author and date in close proximity. If the citation is done within parentheses, place a comma between the author and date. Multiple citations presented simultaneously are presented in alphabetical order and separated by a semicolon.
  3. Carefully match citations and references. The only references appearing on the reference list are those cited in the text. If something is cited in the text, then it must be on the reference list.
  4. ALL—notice I said ALL—quotations require a page number at the end of the quotation. See the style sheet for the rules for inserting page number references in quotations. Words given emphasis or are identified as slang do not require page number references.
  5. If a citation appears at the end of a sentence it is inserted before the period.
  6. There is a temptation to present a series of ideas and then put the citation at the end. When this is happening there is a noticeable pattern of every paragraph ending with a citation. You should try to insert citations when the set of ideas is first introduced. Tell the reader whose ideas you are discussing as early as you can.
  7. When you insert a citation, the same citation should not be inserted again unless there may be some confusion over the person to whom you are referring. Once you cite someone, the reader assumes you are continuing to talk about that work until you give us some clue to the contrary.

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References

  1. Only the first word in the title or subtitle and proper nouns are capitalized in a title.
  2. Volume numbers are italicized and issue numbers are not. Issue numbers are inside of parentheses and there is no space between the volume number and the issue number.
  3. Usually one, and only one, element of a reference is in italics. Think of this as italicizing the top level of the publication.

    Publication Type What Is Italicized
    Journal article Journal name and volume number
    Book Book title
    Chapter in a book Book title (not the chapter title)
    Conference paper Paper title
    Paper in conference proceedings Proceedings title
    Reports Title of the report

  4. In multiple author references, a comma is placed before the ampersand separating the last two authors.
    An ampersand is used and not the word and.
  5. Only initials are used for first and middle names.
  6. All references end in a period except for those that end with a DOI or a URL.
  7. The letters pp are not placed before the page numbers in a journal reference.
  8. If the numbering of a volume of a journal is continuous accross issues, then the issue number need not be included. When in doubt include the issue number.
  9. Web addresses in the body of the paper or the references should not be active, blue, or underlined. (See Writing Style 8 above)
  10. Use double line spacing between and within references. Use hanging indents for each reference.
  11. A bibliography is a list of possible resources for a topic. References refer to the citations in a paper. Therefore the reference section of an APA research paper is entitled References. Do not use Works Cited.

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