APA1 Basics Presentation for Students of

Editor's Notes

• #2: (title) There are several goals in this presentation. (show 1) First, we will learn a little about APA Style – what it is, and why it is important. (show 2) Second, we will examine and discuss a properly formatted APA title page, which many professors require. (show 3) Third, we will learn about basic documentation for books, journals, and websites. While we do not cover every type of source, these are the most common types of sources you will need to use. For additional documentation help, visit the Center for Writing Excellence, consult our website at www.una.edu/writingcenter, or consult your English handbook or APA Style Manual. (show 4) Fourth, we will learn about some fundamental differences between summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting, and we will briefly discuss strategies for doing each. (show 5) Finally, we will review how to integrate summaries, paraphrases, and quotes using signal phrases and in-text citations.
• #3: (show title) What is APA Style, and why use it? (show 1) APA stands for American Psychological Association. This is a professional organization, one of many that rely on constantly up-to-date research, presented mostly in journals and at conferences. (show 2) In 1928, psychologists and anthropologists developed the APA style to resolve academic disputes that occurred not because of different ideas, but because of different ways to present the same knowledge. (show 3) The style they developed has been applied to many journals and newsletters as well as books, in a variety of disciplines: Psychology, Sociology, Education, and Nursing, but also Geography, Composition, and Business – any field where the newest information is most essential. (show 4) Using APA style, many disciplines have made their journals easier to read and understand. The most important reason why you are being required to use this style is because your professor wants you to learn and to be able to participate in your field, by properly preparing your research for publication, just as you will do later in your academic and professional lives.
• #4: (show title) To begin, let’s look at an APA Style cover page. There are three components. (show 1) First, the header must be inserted into the upper margin – not on the top line of the body. If you are using MS Word, insert the page number in the upper right corner. Then, place your cursor in front of the page number. Now add a brief version of your essay title, selecting only the first phrase or the key phrase of the title – two or three words at most that let your reader know exactly what your paper discusses. Now follow it with 5 spaces. Remember, your title page is page one of your paper. (show 2) The running head is used by editors to quickly find where articles begin. In MS Word, place your cursor on the top line of the page, and type Running head just as you see it in the second bullet. Follow immediately with a colon, then skip a space. Set your Caps Lock key, and type in the abbreviated title of your paper, just as you did in the header. Remember to take off your Caps Lock when you are finished. (show 3) When inserting the title and identification, remember that you want the whole body of information centered on the page. Use center justification in MS Word to center your information horizontally. Turn on the ruler (under the MS Word view tab), and center your work on the 4.5” mark, visible on the left-hand ruler. This will center the work vertically. Remember that in APA, everything is double-spaced. (Discuss the title and author – names alphabetically, by contribution, or your choice) When inserting your affiliation and date, you may need to consult your professor. Although the University name is standard, some professors want course number in place of or in addition to the university. If the professor wants the date included, use the format described here – full month, date a comma, then the year. Now let’s look at a completed title page.
• #5: (show all) Here is a completed title page done for a professional publication. Notice that the font size is set to Arial 10. Unless you hear otherwise from your professor, the standard font sizes to use in academic writing are Times New Roman 12 point font or Arial 10 point font. Notice how all the information is double spaced. The title is short enough to fit on one line. If there were other authors, they would be listed one per line as well. A single page handout explaining APA title pages and including a clear example is available on the UNA Center for Writing Excellence website at www.una.edu/writingcenter, as well as in the Center itself. Now don’t forget, if your title page is page one, the first page of your research paper is… that’s right, page two.
• #9: (show title) Now we’re going to jump from the start of the paper to the end of the paper. Although this seems awkward, there’s a very specific reason why we do this. When you research, one of the first steps is to find sources – to find out what other people have to say about a topic. Since you are getting these sources first, it’s a good idea to get their documentation information right away. A second reason why we do this is because if you have the documentation incorrect, you are likely to get the in-text citation wrong as well, so doing this first will help you when you integrate sources into your text. (show 1) As I just said, Documentation refers to the references list at the end of the paper. In MLA, they call this a Works Cited; in Turabian or Chicago, it’s called the Bibliography. But here, it’s called references. (show 2) Here are the important characteristics to remember about your references list… (discuss each)
• #10: (show title) As with every other style, you need to be able to document authors first. (show 1) See here that a single author is listed by the full last name, a comma, a space, the first initial, a period, a space, the middle initial, and a period, then a space, followed by the year in parenthesis, and ending with a period. This show who and when – a complete thought. Notice that the year will always be the second piece of information given – remember what I said earlier about APA emphasizing NEW information? (show 2) In this example, two authors are separated by a comma, a space, the ampersand (shift 7), and another space. The ampersand stands for the word “and.” (show 3) The same pattern used with two authors continues up to six authors. (show 4) After the sixth author, use a comma followed by et al, which is Latin for and others. (show 5) If you are using multiple publications by the same author, list them according to year – oldest to newest. If an author has more than one publication in a year, alphabetize entries by the first major word in the title, and insert a lowercase letter after each year to correspond with that entry.
• #11: (show title) Of course the most common source you will need to document is the book. (show 1) Note that in this example, author and year are treated as I just explained. Titles, however, are not. There is no underlining in APA style; instead, major works, or works that can contain other works, are italicized. See also that only the first word of the title is capitalized here. In titles of books, only the first word, proper nouns, and if a colon is used, the first word after the colon are capitalized. This is because APA treats titles of works like sentences. All capitalization rules for sentences apply to APA book and article titles, the capital after the colon being the one exception. (show 2) In this sample, notice that Pocket is capitalized because it’s the first word, and APA is capitalized as a proper noun acronym. Books with later editions – this one is in its second – are treated as you see here – edition in parentheses, with the period after. (show 3) In the above example, Boston is in Massachusetts. We know this because no state abbreviation is given, and the only internationally recognized Boston is in Massachusetts. See also that only the publisher’s name is offered. Obviously, a publisher is a company, so that information isn’t required.
• #12: (show title) Edited collections are books that have been compiled by editors and that include articles published by many different authors. (show 1) Look at this model for how to document the entire book. The only difference is the use of Eds., or if singular, Ed. To abbreviate the word editors or editor. The abbreviation is always capitalized, always put in parentheses, and here, always gets two periods – the first, in the parentheses, shows that the word is abbreviated. The second, outside the parentheses, marks the end of the editor information. (show 2) Now look at this model for an article or chapter within the edited collection. Here, the first piece of information required is the author of the article or chapter you wish to use, not the editor of the book. After the article author comes the date of publication and then the article title. In other styles, you may have seen article titles in quotation marks, but in APA documentation, that is not the case. Note that capitalization rules follow those used for book titles. Next comes an “In” statement, to indicate that the article is contained in another source. In these situations, the editor’s initials come before the last name, a comma appears after the Editor abbreviation, and the page numbers on which the article appears are provided in exactly the format shown, using parentheses, the abbreviation pp., and the final period to show that who (editor), what (title), and where (pages) are considered one idea. (show 3) Here is an example.
• #13: (show title) Journals will be the next most often used source. Be careful with these, because they break from some of the earlier rules. (show 1) Notice that author, year, and article title are treated just the same as we discussed. However, the Journal title cannot possibly be treated as a sentence, so it receives proper noun capitalization and it is italicized, since it contains smaller works – in this case, articles. Notice the comma after the title, indicating that more information related to location is forthcoming. In this case, the volume number is required, also in italics, since it distinguishes which volume of the journal is required. The issue number is contained within the volume, so it is not part of the title, and therefore gets no italics. However, it works with the volume number to help identify location, so it goes right up against the volume number, with no space between them. Finally, notice that another comma is shown, followed by page numbers. No abbreviation for pages is used. (show 2) Here is an example. See how the capitalization is different for journals, and how close volume 10 and issue 3 are situated? Remember, like book entries, end your documentation with a period.
• #14: (show title) There are two types of online journals: those that are found exclusively on the web, and those that are available in both print and electronic form. You are more likely to encounter the first situation. (show 1) Look at this model. Everything up to the volume number occurs exactly the same as if you were citing a journal article. However, since the article is online, a “retrieval statement” is required. Retrieval statements always begin with the word retrieved, offer the full name of the month, date, and year, with commas after the date and after the year, followed by “from” and the url. Notice how the url is neither underlined nor blue. In APA documentation and in text citation, underlines are not used. To get rid of a hyperlink in MS Word, place your cursor after the last word in the url and hit the backspace key. This should remove the hyperlink without deleting words. If a url is long and needs to be divided between two lines, you can break it after a slash or before a period. Finally, notice that no period appears at the end of an online entry that concludes with a url. This is so that the wrong address is not accidentally entered into the web browser. (show 2) Take a look at this example. (show 3) Now, a quick look at the form for journals online and in print. In these situations, you would treat the article as you would for a journal article, except you would include the words “electronic version” in brackets, to indicate that you read and used the electronic form instead of the hardcopy.
• #15: (show title) We’ll conclude documentation coverage by looking at how to document websites. (show 1) Notice that the model for a document that is a whole site uses the same patterns for author, year, and article or document title. Instead of offering a journal title or book title, however, you simply add the retrieval statement. (show 2) More often, you will find a page as part of a larger site. In these cases, you treat the website title as you would a journal title, using proper noun capitalization, but you do not use italics. Everything else remains the same. (show 3) Here is an example without an author. What do you notice is done differently when there is no author? (show 4) When there is no author, the article or document title is used to list the document in the references. If there is no page title, you could list it by site, but a source without author or page title probably isn’t a very credible or reliable source, so you may want to rethink using it.
• #20: (show title) Now we’ll begin looking at how sources are integrated into the body of your text. There are three ways in which we use sources to provide evidence for our arguments. They are quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. (show 1) (read each as they appear)
• #21: (show title) There is an easy 4-step process you can use to learn to summarize, paraphrase, and quote. Here it is… (show 1) First, get familiar with the text. As you read it, mark the thesis of the chapter, and identify any main points. Main points are usually found in topic or summarizing sentences (generally one in each paragraph), or in sentences that answer questions posed by any headings in the text. (show 2) After you have read to get an understanding of the text, close the book or set the article aside. Now, in your own words, write a single sentence that summarizes the argument or purpose of the piece. Once you have this main idea, write a sentence to summarize each of the major ideas of the piece. Once you have done this, review the article to see that what you wrote is really the author’s point. (show 3) Now find any important points – sentences or single paragraphs in particular – that are important to your argument in your own research. After you read the passage and understand what you read, set the text aside and write what the major points were in your own words. Once you have done this, review to see that you captured the spirit of the author’s idea without using his or her words. (show 4) Finally, if you find something so important that the exact wording has to be discussed or examined in the paper, or when you find something that is so well written that you couldn’t say it any better, go ahead and mark these as passages to quote. For example, any discussion of the ideas espoused in the Declaration of Independence nearly always requires the quote “all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights – and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
• #22: (Show title) Here is what you do when you summarize (read arrow 1) Now here are some summary characteristics (show and read each bullet) Note that when you attribute to an original source, you must refer to at least the author and year in the signal phrase, which we will discuss shortly. In a summary, you are condensing multiple paragraphs or pages down to just a few sentences, or maybe a single paragraph.
• #24: (Show title) Here is what you do when you paraphrase (read arrow 1) Now here are some paraphrase characteristics (show and read each bullet) In the summary, you took much larger segments of text that explained main concepts and core ideas and reduced them to a few sentences or a paragraph. In a paraphrase, you take any segment of the text, usually a single, more focused idea, and put it entirely into your own words. It is not uncommon for a paraphrase to remain about the same length as the original idea, although again, the expression of the idea must be entirely in your own words. Remember, if you shrink a paraphrase too much, then you’ll be summarizing. If you use the author’s words, you’ll actually be quoting.
• #25: (Show title) Here is what you do when you quote a text (read arrow 1) You are not allowed to change anything in the quote without some identifying mark, usually brackets. Changing even a few letters is considered a form of plagiarism by many people. (show and read each bullet) Remember that you do not simply add in a quote (or a paraphrase or summary, for that matter) without creating a transition for your reader. You need to use a signal phrase to show readers that you are moving from your own ideas into someone else’s. Signal phrases also give you the opportunity to discuss how your argument is connected to the source you are integrating. Since signal phrases are so important, let’s turn to them next.
• #26: (show title) Finally, we’ll take a look at the role signal phrases and in-text citation play in APA style. (show 1-2, reading each) Remember, it’s your responsibility to cue the reader as to what is your knowledge and what are your ideas as opposed to someone else’s. (show 3) Here’s a simple rule to follow: (read) (repeat the rule w/underline) Now let’s see how this works.
• #27: (show title) (show 1) In this example, author, year, and page appear in the in-text, or parenthetical citation that comes after the paraphrase or quote. Notice that in parenthetical citations, each item is separated by a comma, and p. is used to indicate page. Notice also that when using parenthetical citations with a quote, the quotation mark closes the quote before the parentheses, since the in-text citation is not part of the actual words. The period, however, goes at the end of everything, since it completes the thought: what was written, who wrote it, when was it written, and where is it written? (show 2) In this example, author and year are provided in the signal phrase, while the page number is provided in the in-text citation. Remember that when the year is not part of the natural grammatical sentence structure, it must be put in parentheses. Also, remember that the quote ends before the in-text citation, but the sentence always gets end punctuation after the in-text citation.
• #28: (show title) (show 1) This example is used when you are summarizing one or more texts. Remember that a summary cannot mark specific pages, since it covers several pages or whole sections. In these cases, use only the author or title and year. If you are synthesizing sources (or bringing them together) by summarizing them, list all sources in alphabetical order. Separate each source with a semicolon. (show 2) If there is no author, use the article or document title in quotes, or, if you are using the book title, make sure it is in italics. (show 3) Finally, for websites and other sources that lack page numbers, provide the author or title and year in the signal phrase. Websites do not have page numbers, even if they are printed out.
• #29: (show all) Here are some sources for further use as you learn about APA Style. There are many online resources available from Writing Centers across the country, and copies of the APA Style Manual and Pocket Guide to APA Style are available for use in the University Writing Center. For more information or to schedule a writing consultation, please visit our website at www.una.edu/writingcenter. This concludes the presentation.