APA Style Guidelines: A Summary

chillibreeze writer — Rohin Kallat

The American Psychological Association (APA) style guide is a set of guidelines intended to “standardize scientific writing.” Although primarily used in the social sciences, the APA style guide can be used for term papers, research reports, and case studies in general. First published in 1929, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is now in its 6th Edition. Sure it may be yet another style guide out there, and sound as intimidating to understand, let alone use. However, for the average person trying to format a paper using these guidelines, the most important sections are those pertaining to: 1) The Format of the Manuscript, 2) In-Text Citations, and 3) The List of References.

Format of the Manuscript
The format of the paper or “manuscript” as it is otherwise known, begins with a “Title page” and has a total of eight possible sections. The other sections are: the “Abstract” or 100-word summary of the manuscript including the conclusions, “Introduction” where sources and the purpose of the study are mentioned, “Method,” where the steps involved in carrying out the study are presented, “Results,” “Discussion” of the results, “References,” and “Appendices,” which not every manuscript will necessarily have.

The Title page has three essential parts: the running head, the title, and the author’s names and their institutional affiliation. The running head is an abbreviated title of the manuscript that appears in the “header”. It must be in all capital letters, left-justified, and be followed by the page number, which is usually almost at the right margin. The complete title of the manuscript, the names of the authors and the institutions they are affiliated to all appear about a third of the way down the page, each double spaced and centered to the page, one below the other. Other aspects of formatting include the use of a serif font, usually Times New Roman, for the text of the manuscript, while employing a sans serif font, usually Arial, when labeling figures. Overall, the document should be left-aligned and double spaced throughout, including between headings, of which there are five levels, and block quotations. The governing principle of the APA style of formatting is to make relevant information more readily available to the reader, doing away with as many visual distractions as possible.

In-text citations
When making a reference to the works and ideas of others, it is important to remember to provide the appropriate credit. Plagiarism is looked down upon around the world, and is punishable as a criminal offence in many countries. Imagine that the main source of information used for the manuscript is a book titled “Everything APA Format” and it is the combined written effort of Ms. Yu Asahara, Mr. Mukesh Sharma Prasad and Dr. Jeremy Stevens, published in the year 2004 by World Renowned Publishers.

The most common APA style of providing an in-text citation, is to begin a sentence with a “signal phrase” like “According to Asahara, Prasad & Stevens (2004),” always using the authors’ last names, and never with a Mr. or Dr. Alternatively, when using a direct quotation for example, the use of parentheses should include the name, year of publication and the page number at the end of the sentence, in the following manner: “(Asahara, Prasad & Stevens, 2004, p.143).” Surely this appears to be terribly burdensome to have to do repeatedly throughout a manuscript, but the APA provides a way out. It is only necessary to list out the last names of all the authors, the very first time you refer to them in the text, and each subsequent reference can use “et al.” to denote more than one author after the first. This will turn “(Asahara, Prasad & Stevens, 2004, p.143).” into “(Asahara et al., 2004, p.143).” if it is the second time the same passage of text is being referred to in the manuscript. This also applies to organizations whose names may be longer than usual, such as the “Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB, 2008)” the first time your manuscript makes a reference to them, followed by “(HMWS&SB, 2008)” for each subsequent reference. These in-text citations make it easy for the reader to find the detailed reference information in the References list at the end of the manuscript.

Referencing sources
The reference list begins on a new page after the “Discussion” section of the manuscript, and they are always listed in alphabetical order. The key components of an APA-style reference are the names of the authors, the date of publication, the title of the document or material, and the publication data, which usually indicates what kind of document it is. There are several variations in format, based on what kind of document or other original material was used in writing the manuscript. To return to our imaginary main source, following the in-text citation in the text to the References list would reveal the following entry:

“Asahara, Y., Prasad, M. S., & Stevens, J. (2004). Everything APA format. New Delhi, India: World
Renowned Publishers”

Pay attention to how this reference listing is formatted; second line indented. To accommodate the various sources of information in today’s world, the 6th Edition also has guidelines for how to cite blogs, wkiks and podcasts. Another important change with APA formatting in the last couple of years has been the use of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that provides a unique alpha-numeric reference code to each journal article published, either in print or online. This ensures that other information, such as URLs that may change over time, will not prevent a person reading the manuscript from being able to find the sources used in writing the manuscript.

There are other aspects to formatting a manuscript or general document using the APA style, yet there are plenty of resources to help people do this. There is the book that details other areas impacted by the APA style, such as the style of writing, or even the fact that the first line of every paragraph is indented five spaces, while it is the second and subsequent lines of a reference listing that are indented. And luckily there are innumerable resources on the Internet that take you through a generic tutorial in APA formatting style or provide you every last detail of how to list references, or something in between these two. Whatever the case, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you’ll never have to remember that “This heading.” is a Level 5 heading, while “This heading” is a Level 3. Remember, the idea behind formatting in general, and particularly the APA style, is for a person to be able to read and access key information as easily as possible.

Editor's note: Most articles submitted to Chillibreeze go through a selection process. Only 30 percent of submitted articles are accepted for publication on the Chillibreeze.com featured article list. All accepted articles are edited and proofread for glaring errors of punctuation and grammar. Sentence structure is changed in certain cases and sometimes, entire sections are rewritten. If you notice any errors that have slipped through the cracks, do let us know! (Email us at info at chillibreeze dot com).

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in February, 2011. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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