An EasyGuide to APA Style. Regan A. R. Gurung
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lines, and how citation styles in the text vary with the number of authors. These details address the appearance of an APA-formatted paper. And now, because APA has recently issued a new edition of its manual, you also need to make sure you understand whether your instructor wants you to write the paper in sixth edition or seventh edition APA format.
An EasyGuide to APA Style (4th ed.) is written for students who are learning to write in APA Style using APA format. Why not just rely on the “official” book, the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (hereafter known as the PM; APA, 2020)? The PM is not evil. And if your instructor thinks you should purchase it, then you probably should. But you should know that the PM was not written primarily as a guide to help students learn to write better. (That is the purpose of this book.) The PM was originally written to provide guidance to researchers on how to submit journal article manuscripts for consideration to be published in the scientific literature. However, it is clear that the PM has evolved into much more than an instruction set and is now a prescriptive collection of rules (format) and writing advice (style) aimed at facilitating and fostering scientific research. Could you actually use our EasyGuide as a replacement for the PM? We think so, but be sure to follow the advice of your instructors. After all, they are the ones who are reading, grading, and providing feedback. That said, beware the itty-bitty style guides that are often required for English composition or first-year writing classes. It may be nice to have one book with all the major styles in it, but books such as these often do not provide all the key information needed and, therefore, are rarely a good substitute for the real thing—or better yet, for a resource such as the one you now hold in your hands.
Here is an analogy to consider when thinking about the PM: The 2020 rulebook for Major League Baseball is 192 pages long; knowing the rules to baseball may be important to a baseball player, but just knowing the rules will not make you a better baseball player. However, if you add tons of baseball practice with feedback from knowledgeable sources (such as coaches, experienced players, books, and videos), you can become a better ballplayer over time. We want this book to be one of those knowledgeable sources you consult on a regular basis to improve your scientific writing throughout your undergraduate career. Combined, the three of us have taught for a long time and have read and graded thousands upon thousands of pages of student papers. We take you behind the scenes of writing and point out major common errors so you can avoid them. We have organized this book to make it easy to find the information students typically need to have when learning APA Style to write papers, which is sometimes not the case with the PM.
Why APA Style Anyway? Wasn’t MLA Good Enough?
Odds are you have already learned some of the rules of at least one other style guide, which may have been that of the MLA (Modern Language Association). It might have been in high school or even in a college-level English composition class, but you may have used MLA style if you wrote your papers with footnotes, if you had a bibliography or works-cited page at the end of your paper, or if you used op. cit. or ibid. in your referencing. The typical MLA method of citing involves listing the author followed by the page number where the information came from (compared with APA Style, which uses author followed by year published). So why APA format? Wasn’t MLA good enough?
It is hard to know with certainty why MLA style was not adopted for psychological writing. The Modern Language Association was founded in 1883 (MLA, 2009); the American Psychological Association was founded in 1892. However, the first “Instructions” to APA authors were not published until 1929, and the MLA Handbook is now in its eighth edition—formally known as the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (MLA, 2016). So, for whatever reason, separate style guides emerged—and there are many more (e.g., Chicago style; American Sociological Association [ASA] style; Turabian style; Modern Humanities Research Association [MHRA] style; and for newspapers, Associated Press [AP] style).
So where did APA Style and format come from? In the very first “Instructions in Regard to Preparation of Manuscript” (1929), a six-member panel recommended “a standard of procedure, to which exceptions would doubtless be necessary, but to which reference might be made in cases of doubt” (p. 57). On a less positive (but believable) note, the 1929 “Instructions” noted that “a badly prepared manuscript always suggests uncritical research and slovenly thinking” (p. 58). Whether fair or not, the quality of our writing reflects the quality of our thinking! Good science requires communication, and if we do not communicate well, even the best ideas in the world will not be understood by others. (Think about the professor who you know is brilliant but has a hard time communicating on a level any student can understand.)
Even though APA format may seem cumbersome to learn, once you are familiar with it, you will feel more comfortable with its conventions. If you have started to read journal articles and papers, you may notice that most, if not all, follow the same organization. The more articles you read, the more thankful you will be that each article is written in the same format and style. It really does make reviewing the literature much easier. We cannot imagine reading a journal article in which the Results section appears before the Method section (and that is not because we lack imagination or are geeks). By following (and relying on) APA Style and format, we provide readers scaffolding to process the complex ideas and information being presented. Ever watch a movie in which the sequence of events is shown out of order (e.g., multiple flashbacks)? Can you tell if something is foreshadowing or background information? Then the movie jumps again. Are we back to the present, or is this a peek into the future? Only once in a while does it work well. (Check out the movies Memento [Todd et al., 2000], Inception [Nolan et al., 2010], and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive [Edelstein et al., 2001] for real mind-bending experiences). Following a sequence and order provides a framework for understanding what happened, what is happening, and what will happen.
In the Long Run, Attention to Detail Matters (Including APA Style and Format)
As you become familiar with the details of writing in APA Style and format, either through using this book alone or with the PM, you should keep two important points in mind. First, there will be times when you are frustrated by having to learn a “new” format, when MLA, Chicago, or another style was working just fine before. Although it may be frustrating to learn something new, this is a task you will repeat hundreds if not thousands of times throughout your work career. This task is part of being an educated person. New procedures will be implemented, a new type of software will be installed, a new gadget will be invented, a new edition of a publication manual will be written—and your task will be to figure it all out. An inherent love of learning and taking on new challenges is an attitude that will serve you well with your future employers, whoever they may be. So, the ability to learn how to write capably in APA Style demonstrates a competence you have that others may not share; in fact, you might know fellow students who pick classes with the least amount of writing. If you develop a skill in an area others systematically avoid, you inevitably make yourself more marketable.
The ability to pay attention to detail, particularly in regard to APA format, can help separate the good from the great. In fact, in a study by Gardner (2007) on the reasons new collegiate hires get fired, failure to pay attention to details is one of the top reasons reported. If you can handle both the big picture and the minute details simultaneously, that is a gift. These gifts can be developed with practice. Practice may not make perfect, but practice allows one to get better and closer to perfect. You have to study, you have to learn from mistakes, and you have to be willing to make the mistakes to maximize your learning ability; obviously, you need to be willing to attempt the task numerous times to gain these experiences. Paying attention to the details can make the difference between earning an A or a B in a course. You may not like the details or how picky and arbitrary they seem, but knowing the rules (and knowing those occasions when you can break the rules) is invaluable. Plus, as you will read in this book, those seemingly “picky” rules can be very helpful to practicing robust science.
Keep in mind that these rules are not just in place for students learning to write. We have some evidence to support the fact that psychologists (including your professors) must also play by the same