Dealing with APA Format

What Is It?

A style such as APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), Chicago (University of Chicago Press) or AP (Associated Press) is a set of rules for all the nitpicking writing things we need rules for. Students in the Writing Center often ask about the rule for numbers—should “13” be spelled out, or only numbers over twenty? Well, there’s not a rule for whether numbers should be spelled out. There are a lot of different ways to put numbers in print. A style guide like APA has its own rule (actually many, many rules) governing how numbers should appear in your term paper, dissertation, or journal article. By putting all its rules in a big reference book, everyone who uses that particular style produces writing that is consistent in its mechanical details. 

Why Be Consistent?

Editors place great value on consistency for its own sake. A journal or book simply looks better if the mechanical details of the text are the same throughout. But more importantly, consistency makes for clarity. An inconsistent way of presenting information can distract from the content. You want to be consistent within your own manuscript. Conforming to a style allows many writers across an academic discipline to be consistent with each other. 

First Things to Learn about APA Style

When you write a research paper in APA style, you should know first of all that your paper must look a certain way. APA style dictates how the title page should by typed, where the page numbers go, the use of a header, spacing of the lines. You will format your paper the exact same way whenever you use APA style. So learn it once and you’re set.

Second, you’ll want to figure out how to cite your sources within your paper. This is not hard to learn, as there are only a couple of variations on how this looks.

Third, you’ll need to figure out how to format your reference list. This can be tricky, because there are many different contingencies: an article with no author, an article with eight authors, government documents, court cases, web sources, etc. Only a very experienced writer memorizes this. So you need to get good at looking things up in the style guide, and perhaps find a mechanical aid. (see next section) 

Is There an Easy Way to Learn All This?

Not a really easy way. It takes time, practice, and attention to detail. I have been looking for a wonderful little book called something like Learn APA While You Sleep, but there doesn’t seem to be anything like that. I recommend a big book called Mastering APA Style: Student’s Workbook and Training Guide. Almost as imposing as the Publication Manual of the APA itself, it does offer a clear and targeted method for learning this junk. It shows you visual examples of the rules in action. I find this fairly easy to cope with. You can order this book at www.apa.org. Another student-focused guide to learning APA style is Writing for Psychology, by Mitchell, Jolley, and O’Shea (Wadsworth, 2004). Obviously geared towards psychology majors, it is useful for others too. It contains sample papers and lots of discussion of salient writing and formatting points.

Make Your Computer Do the Work

You can also automate the citation and reference list process, as well as format your whole paper correctly, using formatting software. The APA puts out APA-Style Helper 3.0, and a quick Google search will find you several other formatting software programs. I have tested StyleEase and FormatEase. These both run about $30, and are very simple to install and use. They use macros to prompt you as you write. When you put in a citation, the program automatically sorts it into your reference list. If I were writing more than one paper in APA style, I would definitely consider such a program a sound investment.  And It’s Free.

The Edgewood library owns a program called RefWorks, which is available free to all students, and accessible from any computer, at home or on campus. RefWorks is a powerful program for doing research. It also has a feature called “Write-n-Cite” that works like the formatting software described above: it plonks your citation in your paper where you want it, and automatically produces your perfect reference list. RefWorks can format your paper in any style you want, from the popular MLA and Chicago to formats specified by particular professional journals. Talk to a librarian about learning to use RefWorks.