Writing in APA Style

1. Writing in APA Style Mirisse Foroughe, M.A. Ph.D. Candidate Graduate Program in Psychology

2. Overview • What is APA and why do we need it? • Form and Content • Form is the structure, universal and objective • Content is meat of your paper: Language • Resources

3. What is APA? • Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition • Rules for preparation of manuscripts • Drawn from psychological literature • Examples: Journal articles and theses • Every aspect of writing is discussed

4. Why do we need APA? • Clear communication • Universal rules • Uniformity (consistent form) means readers can focus on content • Familiar format used internationally • Profs. and T/A’s use it as a standard for marking papers

5. Three Important Areas • Style/format • Sentences, paragraphs, tables, etc. • Unbiased language • Not so rhetorical • Reduces logical fallacies (e.g. appeals to emotion) • Referencing • Citing sources within your paper • Bibliography

6. Style and Format • Easiest part of writing in APA style: • Read the manual! • “monkey see, monkey do” • Proofreading: • Once for each main area (serial) • Simultaneously with different colour pens (parallel) • Cannot hide poor content • There is nowhere to hide!

7. How to Improve Content • Literature reviews • Critically examine and integrate the research: • Did they ask a good question? • How did they measure their variables? • How they did define their variables? • Who were the research participants? • What else could they have considered? • How did they interpret their findings? • Did the results support their hypotheses? • What could be improved about this study or done in a future study? BE SPECIFIC!

8. The Abstract • Brief, comprehensive summary of the content • When should you write it? • DOSK • Dense, Well organized, Self-Contained, Keywords • Nothing that is not in the paper • Nothing that you need to read the paper to understand • Max: 120 words • Use digits for numbers (unless…) • Abbreviate (vs. for versus) • Use the active voice (except…)

9. Language: What to do • Organization • Aim for continuity in words, concepts, and themes. • Use punctuation to show relationships between ideas. • Linking words and phrases • Pronouns that refer to previous sentences • Time links: then, next, after, while, since • Cause/effect links: therefore, consequently, as a result. • Contrast links: but, conversely, nevertheless, however, although, whereas

10. What NOT to do: • Creative writing • Setting up ambiguity (“The Riddler”) • Leaving out the expected (as if it’s too obvious) • Suddenly shifting topic, tense, or person (“The Time Traveler” “Presto Chango”) • Building suspense until the “punch line” (big one) • Avoid boilerplates (fillers) • Do not use “since” when you mean “because” (since refers to time) • Do not use two links (“and thus”) • Noun strings (examples?)

11. Avoid Noun Strings “commonly used investigative expanded issue control question technique” • Write it for a different audience (high school students, non-native speakers) • Untangle the string • Use dashes • Move the last word to the beginning and fill in with verbs and prepositions: “Early childhood thought disorder misdiagnosis”

12. 4 Reasons to Forget Jargon • Big words: small ideas • Annoys the reader • Clouds communication • Wastes space • Using technical vocab when it’s not needed • Substitution of a euphemistic phrase for a familiar term • “monetarily felt scarcity”

13. Be Economical with Words • “based on the fact that” • “at the present time” • “for the purpose of” • “there were several students who completed”

14. No need to repeat yourself • “because of this reason” • “the reason is because” • “the reason why” (my pet peeve!) • “they were both alike” • “a total of 68 participants” • “four different groups saw instructions which were exactly the same as those used” • “Absolutely essential” • “period of time” • “one and the same”

15. Resources • The manual! (BF 76.7 P83 2001) • Sample papers • Journals • BSB undergraduate theses room • BSB graduate theses and dissertations • APA Style Helper (software) • The Centre for Academic Writing • Individual instruction, etutoring, credit courses, • Workshops, in-class visits, great website http://www.arts.yorku.ca/caw/