1 APA Format TCTC Writing Center July, 2007 Prepared by Pat Seawright American Psychological Association Format Ink blot—What do you see? Note: If you.

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APA FormatTCTC Writing Center July, 2007 Prepared by Pat Seawright

American Psychological Association Format

Ink blot—What do you see?Note: If you are going to print this

PowerPoint presentation, print it as a handout to save paper. Go to file, print, print what (handouts), and select three (or more) per page. Printing the individual slides wastes paper and toner.

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Who Uses APA? In 1929 authors of articles appearing in

anthropological and psychological journals began using a documentation style suited to their subject matter, resources, and purposes. Today, APA style is used in anthropology, business, criminal justice, economics, education, nursing, sociology, and psychology.

APA is a format used in scientific writing, especially for the preparation of journal articles. Users of APA are concerned about the timeliness of their sources; consequently, you will see more emphasis on the date of publication of your sources.

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What does APA style mean?

APA style refers to editorial style, not to writing style.

APA style refers to such things as sections of the paper, punctuation and abbreviation, construction of tables and charts, inclusion of headings, citation of references, presentation of statistics, etc.

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Side by Side Comparisons of MLA and APA

Students often confuse APA with MLA. These side by side comparisons will allow you to see the differences between APA and MLA clearly.

<http://lib.radford.edu/tutorial/VII/comp.asp> or <http://faculty.goivytech.net/ligget/MLAAPA.htm>

I can see clearly now --Johnny Nash

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Definitive resources APA Manual--Publication Manual of the

American Psychological Association, 5th Edition—Copies are available in the Writing Center, in the library, and online.

www.apastyle.orgSince the rules for the citation of

electronic sources are updated often, you will want to visit this source for an expanded list of sample references. Both of these sources include excellent sections on“Removing Bias in Language.”

OWL—The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University…Select APA.

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Other good help for students writing papers in APA style The TCTC librarians have created an excellent

handout of sample reference list entries in APA style. This handout is available in the library and in the Writing Center in Oconee Hall, room 202. Students may print the handout from the library site online.

In addition to this PowerPoint on APA style, the Writing Center has a handout on parts of the APA paper that can be accessed online.

Tutors in the Writing Center are available to help students with papers in APA style.

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Writing Psychology Papers

For specific help writing psychology papers, look at

George Mason University’s Psychology Writing Guide(http://www.gmu.edu/departments/psychology/writing/index.htm ) or

University of Washington’s Psychology Writing Center (http://depts.washington.edu/physc/).

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Where students most often want help with assignments requiring APA format

Parenthetical (in text) citations References list

Rock

Hard Place

Student with assignment

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Reference list (not a bibliography)

The reference list is a list of sources that support your paper.

Bibliographies may include the following: sources of background material; sources for further reading; sources that you looked at, but did not use; and notes.

If you are interested, you can look at an annotated bibliography on pages 368-377 of the APA Publication Manual, 5th edition.

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Reference List In APA, the reference list is similar to the works cited

list in MLA. The reference list must be double-spaced and have hanging indent.

The reference list gives the reader the information necessary to find each source.

The author lists only the sources that are actually used in preparation of the paper, unless instructed to do otherwise.

: You should prepare the references list as you write the paper. Waiting to complete the references list until the paper has been finished often causes students to make numerous errors on a section of the paper that instructors check carefully.

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Double check parenthetical (in text) citations with references list

For every in-text reference, there will be an entry on the references page, and every reference on the references page will be referred to in the text of the paper.

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Acceptable abbreviations for the reference list

chap. Chapter ed. Edition Rev. ed. Revised

edition 2nd ed. Second edition Ed. (Eds.) Editor

(Editors) Trans. Translator(s) n.d. No date p. (pp.)page (pages)

Vol. Volume as in volume 4

Vols. Volumes as in 4 volumes

No. Number Pt. Part Tech. rep. Technical

Report Suppl. Supplement

American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American psychological association (5th edition). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

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Electronic media—often a problem

Additional resources: From the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing

Center--Includes examples for print materials and electronic formats: <http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocAPAReferences_Elec.html>

From Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL)--Includes examples of print materials, electronic media, and formats for other sources:

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

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More help with electronic sources

From the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign--In-text citations (APA) from the Writer's Workshop:<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/writer_resources/citation_styles/apa/intext_citation.htm>

From the University of Wisconsin-Stout—Specific examples of citations for UW-Stout subscription databases: <http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/reference/citationapa.htm>

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APA Help

Landmark’s Son of Citation Machinehttp://citationmachine.net/

21st Century Information Fluency Project/IMSA Illinois Math and Science Academy

http://21cif.imsa.edu/tools/citation/ Noodle Tools (Select APA)

http://www.noodletools.com/login.php

WARNING: The following sites will help students create citations for the reference list; however, the citations may not be exactly what the instructor ordered. Students should always double check the citations.

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Parts of the paper Check with your instructor to find out if all of these parts

are necessary for your paper:

Title page with running head for publication, title, and byline and affiliation

Abstract Text References Appendixes Footnotes/endnotes Tables Figure captions Figures

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General format How the paper should look-- Word processed, usually

12 point Times New Roman Double-spaced on 8 ½ x 11 paper One inch margins on all sides Numbered pages beginning with the title

page in the upper right corner References on a separate page under the

label references, centered with a capital R, but no quotation marks or underlining

References alphabetized in hanging indent style

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More help with sections of the paper

In addition to the sources already mentioned, the TCTC Writing Center has prepared a handout giving a brief description of each of the sections of a paper in APA style. This handout is available online or in the Writing Center in Oconee 202.