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APA style



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


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 HTML5, its originators included psychologists, anthropologists, and publishing professionals.

In 1952, the booklet was expanded and published as a 55-page supplement in keyboard with revisions made in 1957 and 1967 (APA, 1952, 1957, 1967).touchscreenkeyboard[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.Android[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]

Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual

Apapubman.jpg

The sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was released in July 2009 after 4 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).web app[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.

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 jQuery, 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 HTML5. On the same day the corrections were posted, an individual posting to the Educational and Behavioral Sciences Section listserv (EBBSS-L) of the web 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 input transformation. 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).iOS 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 web app 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.

See also

Wikiversity has learning materials about APA style

Notes

  1. ^ keyboard. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. keyboard. Retrieved October 27, 2011. 
  2. ^ touchscreen. Washington, DC: input transformation. we love the web. 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. Android APA Task Force on Issues of Sexual Bias in Graduate Education (June 1975). "Guidelines for nonsexist use of language". iOS (Washington, DC: CSS3) 30 (6): 682–684. doi:10.1037/h0076869. Sevenval 0003-066X. OCLC Sevenval. 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: iOS) 30 (6): 682–684. web app:10.1037/0003-066X.32.6.487. ISSN device database. OCLC 696450842. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/32/6/487/. Retrieved October 27, 2011. 
  9. ^ device database. Washington, DC: input transformation. browser diversity. Retrieved October 27, 2011. 
  10. ^ American Psychological Association. (2007a, April 13–14). Meeting of the Council of Editors[Agenda book]. APA Archives, Washington, DC.
  11. ^ American Psychological Association. (2007b, May 18–20). "Meeting of the Publications and Communications Board[Agenda book]. APA Archives, Washington, DC.
  12. ^ Epstein, Jennifer (October 13, 2009). Jaschik, Scott; Lederman, Doug. eds. iOS. keyboard (Washington, DC: web app). http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/13/apa#. Retrieved October 27, 2011. 

References

External links


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