APA Style Guidelines: A Summary

chillibreeze writer — Maitreyi Ramanan

Writing styles have evolved with the origin of writing itself. Various civilizations devised rules and conventions to record the spoken word on papyrus or clay tablets. For instance, scripts in Arabic and Hebrew had to be perused right to left. Chinese scripts were written from top to bottom. Beginning with the advent of the Roman alphabet and moving on to the printing press through global trade, computers and electronic publishing - writing styles have constantly changed.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, prescription of styles for manuscripts and documents came to be devised to simplify printing processes and enable consistency in publication of academic manuals at places such as the Oxford University Press and University of Chicago Press.

In the year 1929, the American Psychological Association - at the instance of social and behavioral scientists - published a manual to standardize scientific writing .This style came to be known as the APA style and has become an accepted and widely used format for research reports, case studies etc in technical and social sciences .

The one major purpose of all the rules in the APA publication manual is to promote clarity and understanding in all its publications. The manual touches upon all aspects of writing. The 2009 manual incorporates issues pertaining to the internet and social media as well.

Salient Features of APA style:

Manuscript Format: Specifies indentation, spacing, and fonts to be used throughout the manual. Half inch indentation for the first line of paragraphs and double space between lines is a basic requirement. The text has to be ‘left justified’ but the right margin of text may be ‘ragged’. Title and abstract have to be placed on separate pages (Pages 1 and2) . The text should begin on a separate page (Page 3). Headings and subheadings are seen as different ‘levels’. Each of these headings have to conform to a particular style, that is, some headings may have to be capitalized and some may have to be indented. The text has to be a ‘serif typeface’- usually ‘Times New Roman’ and figures and their labels differentiated by using ‘sans serif type face’ such as an ‘Arial’ font.

The intent of such precise guidelines is to ensure that a researcher does not agonize over form and can concentrate on his content. The formatting can be used to devise a template in word processing software leaving only the notes and data to be entered as and when needed. Further, conformity of format in all documents, enables cataloguing and retrieval from databases.

Reducing Bias:
Social equity is an important aspect of the APA style. For instance, when reference to particular ethnic groups or differently abled persons is made, neutral expressions without connotations of prejudice have to be used. It is imperative for the phraseology to be inclusive. An example would be, reports on field trials: ‘participation’ of volunteers in trials is to be acknowledged rather than ‘administration’ of drugs on them. APA style also insists on writing in ‘passive voice’ rather than ‘active voice’. Thus the stress would be on the topic or research itself and not on the author.

Citation and References:
APA style has in place an elaborate system for recording citations both in text and references. Plagiarism is thus discouraged. Name of the author, date of publication, tittle of the original publication, page number, are all to be furnished in a certain order. When electronic documents are quoted reference should indicate the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) or cite the home page URL. Even in respect of social media citation URL of group page with retrieval date or cached date has to be recorded.

JARS and MARS:
Journal article reporting standards and meta-analysis reporting standards strive to maintain high levels of credibility for statistical analysis of scientific investigations and field trials. In ‘JARS’, apart from the usual narration of the problems under investigation, sample sizes etc., title pages and abstracts are expected to chronicle - sources of funding , data gathering procedures and conflicts of interests. In ‘MARS’, as it involves combining the results of several studies, in addition to the JARS standards , capability and qualification of the coders who undertake the analysis to arrive at results, also has to be registered. Thus, the APA style lays great emphasis on ethics in science and society.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in November, 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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—About our writer:

Maitreyi Ramanan is a science and literature major from college but a 'finance' person by vocation. She enjoys reading and writing and has been bitten by the travel bug!

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