Introduction to APA Style
Introduction to APA Style
Hello and welcome to this instruction on APA Style. My name is Theresa Bell and I am the Royal Roads Writing Centre Coordinator.
The goal of this presentation is to provide you with an overview of the APA style not necessarily everything that you are going to need to know about the APA style but enough to get you going in starting to write papers.
This presentation if you are viewing it in its entirety would probably take about 1 hour and 15 minutes and you also welcome to go to certain sections you are looking for any time you need to.
What is APA STYLE? – See Slide 1
APA Style is the style rules published in the Publication Manual of American Psychological Association, and that is what APA stands for. The current version is a blue book, and it is the sixth edition and the key thing for you to remember as an author of academic papers is that the book was actually written with an audience in mind of people who are submitting journal articles from publications in APA and reviewed journal. That means that the book was not necessarily written with students writing papers in mind and you may encounter a few differences as you work through your program of the expectations of what your papers should look like versus what is presented in the APA Manual. If there is ever a situation where you have been asked to do something different by your professor or your program that is different from the APA guide please do what your professor or program asks you to do. Program rules or your professor expectations always over rule the APA. The APA rules are basically there for you in lieu of other expectations. When in doubt you can use APA but if your professor of the program has asked you to do something different please follow those instructions. If you have any questions as to what the expectations are,those are questions that you should ask your professor or the program in order to get their take on what formatting you should follow for your papers.
As I go through this presentation you might want to have handy the APA Help Guide. The APA Help Guide is a booklet that I put together and the criteria that appear in that booklet are the answers to the questions students often ask me.
Formatting – See Slide 2
The basics that you are going to be working with are a letter size page, portrait orientation and Times New Roman and the standard APA 12 pt. font. If you do not like the Times New Roman font then check with your professor to see if you can hand your paper in with some other font. If not, my suggestion would be to write your paper in with whatever font makes you happy and then before you hand it in, do a select all and shift it into the Times New Roman 12.
When it comes to formatting some of the differences with academic expectations in those of journal article author show up in the Title Page and Table of Contents page. The title page is probably going to have specific information requested by your professor and in the APA Manual the rules show what is expected on the title page is appropriate for someone who is creating a journal article versus someone who is writing a paper. What information that is to appear on your title page is a question to ask of your professor.
If you go to your APA Help Guide and look up how to create a Table of Contents, you actually aren’t going to be able to find information for that. The reason for that is that articles don’t have Tables of Content. However, if you use the Word standard formatting function to create a Table of Content, that should be acceptable. If you look at page three in the APA Help Guide you will see that I have a Table of Contents there for that document and that gives you a standard layout, which is probably a model that you could follow. If you are unsure of whether or not this is what your professor is looking for then always ask your professor if you can use that model for your Table of Contents.
What I have shown you here on slide 2 are the basics so if you are about to start writing your first paper and you are trying to tackle APA for the first time here is a few things to think about.
Spacing and indentation:
- Double-space body text, including block quotations and references
That means that the first word of your body text through to the end of the references, everything should be double spaced.
- Indent first line of a new paragraph by one tab space
You can use Word’s standard setting for a tab which is usually three to five spaces but use the tab space as it is set up as a default. Because you are indenting the first line of a paragraph by one tab space what that does to your reader is it flags to your reader that you are starting a new paragraph. You don’t need to add extra wide space between paragraphs because that indentation gives that indication to your reader. If you want to see what that looks like go to page 2 in the APA Help Guide.
- Indent entire block quotation (quotation of 40+ words) by one tab space from left margin
If you would like to see what that looks like go to the bottom of page 12 in the APA Help Guide you will see what a block quotation is.
Margins
- 2.5 cms/1” on all sides
Unless your program has given you other requirements the 1” margins should be on all sides of your documents. If you look in the APA Help Guide they say anything from 1” to 1.5”, the standard academic formatting is 1” on all sides.
Page number
- Must appear in the top right corner of every page except for the title page
You are not going to do page 2 of 8 or page 1, just the number. Except for the title page, which comes back to the difference between academic paper and the general articles. If you look in the APA manual, you will see that it directs authors to provide page number on the title page. However, the academic convention for a title page is to not have a page number. It does however count in your overall page count. So, the title page is page 1, but the number does not show. The first page to show a number is page 2. If you go to the APA Help Guide and look at the title page there isn’t a page number on page 1 but the next page however shows the page number.
There are some others things that you may be asked to do as you get into writing papers. There is something called a running head and also section headings. For more information and samples on this and other formatting issues please look at pages 7-11 in the APA Help Guide. If you go back to the APA Writing section of the website and formatting section you will also see a document called Formatting Overview.
Inline quotations – Slide 3
A quotation is the direct word for word copying of text from another document into your text. The APA breaks out quotations into two different types. The type that I have shown you is the in-line quotation. What it refers to is:
- Quotations of 39 words or fewer should continue on the same line as the rest of the text, and quotation marks should appear at the beginning and end of the quoted text. The in-text citation should appear after the closing quotation mark, but before the period. For example, “I quoted this text” (Author, year, p. 4).
You see that the quotation has both opening and closing quotation marks and those quotation marks means the inline quotation is saying to your reader that the text enclosed in quotation marks originated with another author.
Block quotations – See Slide 4
- Quotations of 40+ words should be formatted as block quotations. Begin the quotation on a separate line, indent the entire quotation 1 tab space, do not use quotation marks, and the in-text citation follows after the closing punctuation. For example:
Please pretend this is a quotation of 40+ words, and note that the first line is not indented. (Author, year, p.4)
In a block quotation, the entire quotation is indented one-half space from the left margin. You will also see that there aren’t quotation marks around text. The reason for that is because you don’t need them since the text is indented and quotation marks aren’t necessary.
In a block quotation the punctuation comes between the quotation and the citation. In-line quotation punctuation comes after the citation. In block quote the punctuation always comes after the quoted text and before the citation.
For more information on quotations look at pages 12-14 in the APA Help Guide.
In-text citations – See Slide 5
- Citation is the information that appears in the round brackets after the quoted or paraphrased text
Paraphrasing refers to when you take information from another Author’s text and you present the information in your text but in your own words. So it isn’t a word for word replication that what a quotation does but rather you are using your own words to present the meaning. Often times this is used if you are summarizing information. For example, if you have read three pages of text and you want to present to your reader the two main ideas that came out of that text, by paraphrasing it you are able to cut down the amount of text involved in presenting those ideas but you are also showing your thinking concept, showing how you understand what those main ideas area. It is for that reason that professors tend to prefer people paraphrase versus quote material because it does show off that critical thinking process.
Regardless of whether you have quoted or paraphrased something you must also provide a citation to show to your reader
a)The information didn’t originate with you
b)Give them sufficient information so they can then look up the source and references
Citation should appear after each instance of information that came from someone else’s text. You can’t put a citation at the end of a paragraph and assume that your reader will understand that entire paragraph came from that source. If I see a sentence with a citation at the end of it my interpretation of that is that only the last sentence came from that source. As you are going through a paragraph each instance of information taken from another source should have a citation attached to it.
- Include the author’s last name, the date of publication/copyright, and the location reference
For example: (Johnson, 2010, p. 4) or (Royal Roads University, 2010, para. 5)
If you look in the APA Manual you will see that the directions they offer is that quoted text must always provide a page or paragraph number, some kind of location number. With paraphrasing text the Manual directs that authors do not need to provide the page and paragraph number. If you look at page 171 in the Manual you will see that the Guide suggests to authors that providing that location reference can be beneficial particularly helpful to your reader to find the information in the text. If you paraphrase something out of a book and you don’t provide its location reference essentially what you are saying to your reader is it is okay go to this book and then look for this information, but it is not in these words and I am not telling you where to look for it. That would be a difficult task for your reader.
There is leeway within the Manual for you as the author to decide whether or not you are going to decide whether or not you are going to provide the location reference for paraphrased text. I generally encourage people to provide the information because I think it is good practice if it is easier for your reader to locate the information. It also makes your life easier if you decide if you want to go back to that paraphrased information and expand on the idea. If you also haven’t made notes of where that information is presented and resourced then you are also having to go back and go through that resource again to locate that information.
Whatever approach you decide to take please make sure you are consistent, you will always provide citations for quoted text. If you decide that you are not providing the page or paragraph number for paraphrased text, keep that consistent throughout the document so that reader doesn’t get confused as to how you are approaching it.
The decision as to whether or not you are providing a page or paragraph number comes down to the type of document that you are working with and whether it is co-paginated or not, meaning if you are working with a book or pdf that has page numbers assigned then that is what you could use within your citation. If you are working with a website where page numbers are not assigned to the document but rather you can count out the number of paragraphs on the page where your information resides then you can use the paragraph number.
Example:
According to the American Psychological Association (APA) (2010), “references in APA publications are cited in text with an author-date citation system” (p. 174).
I also have the abbreviation for APA, what I am doing is I am introducing this abbreviation into the body text for the first time. When you do that you need to spell out the name in full and then in round brackets present the abbreviation. Once you have done that you can then subsequent reference to this organization you can use the abbreviation. You need to introduce it first.
Another way of setting up, it is called a pleated phrase, I have it in quotations, then in the citation that follows is the author, year of copyright and location reference. The reason for the abbreviation is because the APA treats what happens in the body text and what happens in your citation as two separate things. To this point I haven’t yet introduced this abbreviation into my citation and it could happen that if I introduce the abbreviation into the body text four pages ago but his is the first time it was listed the citation. This helps to remind your reader of what the abbreviation stands for.
Subsequent citations to an APA author’s text could simply say APA rather than spelling out the name in full.
How you decide which approach you are going to take to structuring your citation comes down to a decision of what do you want to emphasize. What I mean by that is that I am highlighting who wrote this information. It is important to me that the author of this text, that my reader knows that the following quotation came from the American Psychological Association. This decision might be whether or not presenting the author’s name as credibility to the quotation or is it important information that the reader needs to know.
This example, however I have decided that I want my reader to focus on is the actual text itself versus the author of the text. This is one way of making sure you are not using a very repetitive approach to introduce the quotation in your text.
Example:
Remember that, “references in APA publications are cited in text with an author-date citation system and are listed alphabetically in the text” (American Psychological Association (APA), 2010, p. 174).
I would like to mention what is called a lead in phrase. What this does is it sets the context for why the quotation that you are using is important. If I just dumped a quotation into the text and didn’t give any context for my reader to understand why I find it meaningful, what I am assuming is that my reader thinks in exactly the same way that I do and making the same kind of connection that I do. As the author, it is my responsibility to make sure that my reader understands what I am thinking versus relying on assumptions.
There should never be a quotation as a standalonesentence in a paper. There should always be some kind of other context provided whether the name of the author, according to the American Psychological Association, or it could be Brown agreed to that, or someone suggested that, whatever structure is appropriate or in the example it is suggested what the reader should do with this information. Whatever approach is used, it gives that context to the reader to help understand why the quotation is important.
Choose the correct citation: See slide Choose the Correct Citation
Look through this and chose the one that you think is correct.
The correct answer is B.
A – is incorrect because it is missing the “p.” – for page number