http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style

APA style

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Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (abbreviated "APA Style") is a style guide that offers academic authors guidance on various subjects for the submission of papers to the publications of APA.^[1] The APA states that they were developed to assist reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and to "move the idea forward with a minimum of distraction and a maximum of precision."^[2] The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association contains guidlines on many aspects of academic writing as it is seen appropriate by the APA. Among the topics covered are information on the structure of research papers of various kinds, spelling rules, an author-date reference style, construction of tables and graphs, [[1]], formatting of papers, and much more.

Contents [hide] 1 Early editions 2 Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual 3 Errors in the First Printing of the Sixth Edition 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Early editions

The Publication Manual was established in 1929 as a seven-page document with a set of procedures to increase the ease of reading comprehension (APA, 2009a, p. xiii).^[3] Created under the sponsorship of the United States National Research Council, its originators included psychologists, anthropologists, and publishing professionals.
In 1952, the booklet was expanded and published as a 55-page supplement in Psychological Bulletin with revisions made in 1957 and 1967 (APA, 1952, 1957, 1967).^[4][5][6] The first edition covered word choice, grammar, punctuation, formatting, journal publication policies, and "wrapping and shipping" (APA, Council of Editors, 1952, p. 442).
In response to the growing complexities of scientific reporting, subsequent editions were released in 1974, 1983, 1994, and 2001. Primarily known for the simplicity of its reference citation style, the Publication Manual also established standards for language use that had far-reaching effects. Particularly influential were the "Guidelines for Nonsexist Language in APA Journals," first published as a modification to the 1974 edition, which provided practical alternatives to sexist language then in common usage.^[7][8] The guidelines for reducing bias in language have been updated over the years and presently provide practical guidance for writing about race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status (APA, 2009, pp. 70–77; see also APA, 2009b).^[9]

[edit] Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual

The sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was released in July 2009 after four years of development. The Publication Manual Revision Task Force of the American Psychological Association established parameters for the revision based on published criticism, user comments, commissioned reviews, and input from psychologists, nurses, librarians, business leaders, publishing professionals, and APA governance groups (APA, 2007a, 2007b).^[10][11] To accomplish these revisions, the Task Force appointed working groups of four to nine members in seven areas: Bias-Free Language, Ethics, Graphics, Journal Article Reporting Standards, References, Statistics, and Writing Style (APA, 2009, pp. xvii–xviii).
The APA explained the issuing of a new edition only eight years after the fifth edition by pointing to the increased use of online source or online access to academic journals (6th edition, p. xv). The sixth edition is accompanied by a web presence.

[edit] Errors in the First Printing of the Sixth Edition

Despite multiple reviews of the manuscript at the copyediting and proofreading stages by senior editors, staff realized shortly after the manual had gone to press that the sample papers contained multiple errors. Among the detected errors were:

• In 188 style guidelines, two errors were made, and one of these was a punctuation error.
• In almost 1,000 examples provided to illustrate those rules, 36 errors were made (roughly half of these occurred in the sample papers, which were subsequently corrected and posted online). Another 10 occurred in the 374 examples that were provided in the reference chapter.
• Five clarifications to text were made. These were not errors but rather clarified and expanded text, for example, adding a second example for both a blog post and a blog comment.
• Three pages of nonsignificant typographical errors were corrected. These included such things as changing an em dash to an en dash, changing a minus sign to a hyphen, and correcting for added space that was automatically added when a sample form was reproduced.

In the interest of transparency (and following the same procedure that was followed for the fifth edition), staff posted all of the corrections online in a single document on October 1, 2009, and shortly thereafter alerted users to the existence of the corrections in a blog entry. On the same day the corrections were posted, an individual posting to the Educational and Behavioral Sciences Section listserv (EBBSS-L) of the American Library Association alerted readers to what she described as the "many" errors in the first printing and speculated that "some but not all" would be corrected in a second printing. On October 5, 2009, APA staff responded to the note clarifying that errors were found in the sample papers, that the papers had been corrected and posted online, that the substantive guidance in the manual was correct and accurate as printed, and that a full list of corrections could be found at the APA Style website. Nevertheless, APA refused initially to exchange submitted erroneous books of the first with corrected versions of the second edition. On October 13, 2009, the article "Correcting a Style Guide" was published in the online newspaper Inside Higher Education that included interviews with several individuals who defined the errors as "egregious" (Epstein, 2009).^[12] The article, along with rumors spread on various listervs, resulted in exaggerated accounts of both the magnitude and the extent of the errors, with some reports on Amazon.com claiming more than 80 pages of errors had occurred. APA responded to the increasing confusion by issuing an apology and implementing a return/replacement program for purchasers who wished to exchange their first printing copies for second printing copies of the Publication Manual. The first edition copies returned to APA were destroyed. The second and all subsequent printings of the Publication Manual have been fully corrected.

[edit] See also

Wikiversity has learning materials about APA style

• Citation
• Comparison of reference management software

[edit] Notes

1. ^ "APA Journals Manuscript Submission Instructions for All Authors". Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/instructions.aspx#. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
2. ^ "APA Style". Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://www.apastyle.org/. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
3. ^ Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). 2009. Washington, DC
4. ^ American Psychological Association, Council of Editors. (1952). In 1967 the Publication Manual made also the shift from footnotes to parenthetical referencing. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Psychological Bulletin, 49(Suppl., Pt. 2), 389-449.
5. ^ American Psychological Association. (1957). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Rev. ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
6. ^ American Psychological Association. (1967). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Rev. ed.). Washington, DC: Author
7. ^ APA Task Force on Issues of Sexual Bias in Graduate Education (June 1975). "Guidelines for nonsexist use of language". American Psychologist (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association) 30 (6): 682–684. DOI:10.1037/h0076869. ISSN 0003-066X. OCLC 696450842. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/30/6/682/. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
8. ^ APA Publication Manual Task Force (June 1977). "Guidelines for nonsexist language in APA journals [Change Sheet 2"]. American Psychologist (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association) 30 (6): 682–684. DOI:10.1037/0003-066X.32.6.487. ISSN 0003-066X. OCLC 696450842. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/32/6/487/. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
9. ^ "Supplemental materials: Chapter 3: Writing Clearly and Concisely". Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://apastyle.org/manual/supplement/index.aspx. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
10. ^ American Psychological Association. (2007a, April 13–14). Meeting of the Council of Editors [Agenda book]. APA Archives, Washington, D.C.
11. ^ American Psychological Association. (2007b, May 18–20). "Meeting of the Publications and Communications Board [Agenda book]. APA Archives, Washington, D.C.
12. ^ Epstein, Jennifer (October 13, 2009). Jaschik, Scott; Lederman, Doug. eds. "Correcting a Style Guide". Inside Higher Ed (Washington, DC: Inside Higher Ed). http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/13/apa#. Retrieved October 27, 2011.

[edit] References

• American Psychological Association. (2010). The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. ISBN 978-1-4338-0562-2
• American Psychological Association. (2001). The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. ISBN 978-1-55798-791-4

[edit] External links

• "APA Style". http://www.apastyle.org/. Retrieved April 28, 2012. home page.
• "Welcome to the Purdue OWL". Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). West Lafayette, IN, USA: Department of English, Purdue University. 1995-2011. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/. Retrieved April 28, 2012. - A hypertextual electronic workshop.
• "APA Style—Reference List/In-Text" (PDF). London, England: AcademicExperts.us. 29 November 2004. http://www.academicexperts.us/dl/APA_Style.pdf. Retrieved 28 April 2012.
• "TuPera - Tu gestor de referencias bibliográficas [TuPera - Your bibliographic reference manager]" (in Spanish). http://tupera.com/. Retrieved 28 April 2012. (Registration required)
• "Citation Styles « Writers Workshop: Writer Resources « The Center for Writing Studies, Illinois". The Center for Writing Studies. Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA: The Center for Writing Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. 2011. http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/citation/. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
• Meijer, Erik (Copyright (C) 1994-2012). "CTAN web interface: package apacite". Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. http://www.ctan.org/pkg/apacite. Retrieved April 28, 2012. "Apacite provides a BibTeX style and a LaTeX package which are designed to match the requirements of the American Psychological Association's style for citations."
• Protopapas, Athanassios (December 9, 2008). "apa.cls". Ινστιτούτο Επεξεργασίας του Λόγου, ΙΕΛ. Athens, Greece: Institute for Language and Speech Processing. http://www.ilsp.gr/homepages/protopapas/apacls.html. Retrieved April 28, 2012. "apa.cls is a document class for typesetting manuscripts with LaTeX according to the rules of the 5th edition (2001) of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association." .
• Fauss, D. Lynn (August 1, 2008). "APA Style Basics.". The Write Direction's Dr Paper Software: Essential Software for College bound students. Reynoldsburg, OH, USA: The Write Direction Inc. http://www.thewritedirection.net/apaguide.net/apaguide.pdf. Retrieved April 28, 2012. Summary of APA Rules.
• "APA Format". http://apa-mla-format.com/apa-format/. Retrieved April 28, 2012. [From HTML source code description:] "This APA format tool facilitates the creation of the works cited page by generating the correct APA citation following the latest style and rules."
• "Harvard Referencing Generator - CiteThisForMe". http://www.citethisforme.com/. Retrieved April 28, 2012. "Add your references: Just fill in the details you know and we'll format them correctly."
• "CiteFast automatically formats references: APA 6th edition, MLA 7th ed. and Chicago 16th ed.". http://www.citefast.com/. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
• Warlick, David. "Son of Citation Machine". Raleigh, NC, USA: The Landmark Project. http://citationmachine.net/index2.php. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
• "KnightCite Citation Service". Hekman Library. Grand Rapids, MI, USA: Calvin College. http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/. Retrieved April 28, 2012. An APA, MLA, and Chicago Style citation generator.
• "NoodleTools : MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian Bibliography Composer, Online Notecards". California, USA: NoodleTools, Inc. http://www.noodletools.com/. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
• Plonsky, Mark (February 21, 2007). "APA Style Guide". Stevens Point, WI, USA: University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. http://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/mp/APA/apa4b.htm. Retrieved April 28, 2012. Teacher's Guide compiled by Mark Plonsky, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point.

This page was last modified on 12 June 2012 at 16:53.



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