After reading our article, you will be able to understand the essence of the requirements for design, developed by the Americans. This is useful when reading foreign sources, independent work on research and will simply be useful for overall development.
Nuances of style
АРА style has a number of significant differences from the generally accepted requirements for the design of educational and scientific works written in the study guides of universities. This is partly true for the reference list used. After reading it, any person should easily find the book or article you referred to in the text.
The list is built in alphabetical order (you need to take into account the first letter of the author’s surname). Probably, you will immediately ask a question: “And what if I have to quote several articles by the same author?” It’s all logical: they should be placed in the list taking into account the chronology. First – articles published in an earlier period of time.
Despite the fact that an intricate name carries a journal, it should be indicated as it is (with all commas, dashes and capital letters). If you need to make a link to a web page or book – with a capital letter they write a title, a subtitle, the first word after the colon, surnames and proper names.
Principles of АРА style when writing citations
Quotations are often included in written student work. You understand that in this way you can give solidity to your work (if, of course, use them for a reason). Incorrect design of the quote can cause, at least, irritation of the first reader of your work – the teacher. Perhaps, it is not necessary to test his nervous system for strength, but it is better to get acquainted with the approaches to the formulation of citations in АРА style.
The first thing to understand: you write a minimum of information about the source in the very text of the work, and the full data you specify in the list. After the statement that you quote in the text; its author and year of publication are written in brackets. This is the most common method, although it can vary. As a result, the text looks like this:
Or:
In the case where the number of authors is from two to seven:
… a similar result was shown by subsequent experiments (Forester and Carter, 2004).
for free
… conduction of the study revealed such a feature for the first time (Stone, King, Miller and Wilson, 1990).
If the authors are more than seven, the APA style provides such a variant of the citation design:
Brown and others (2011) came to the conclusion that …
It happens that the author of the book is not specified. Then you can only use its name and year. If the quote contains more than four dozen words – it is rendered in a separate block, the quotes are not put.
Requirements to the reference list
Making a reference list is an activity that little inspires students. If in the text of the work you can afford to “pour some water” or throw a tricky phrase of your own composition, then the reference list requires a boring listing of words, numbers and semicolons. APA style dictates its requirements. Remembering them is not as difficult as it might seem at once:
To specify a book, one should list:
- The author’s surname.
- His initials.
- The year the book was published.
- Title.
- The city in which it was published.
- Name of the publishing house.
For example:
Freud, Z. (2005). Introduction to psychoanalysis. Moscow city: Nauka.
A similar way is made up of a quotation from a journal article. Indicates that:
- The author’s surname.
- His initials.
- Year of the issue.
- Article title.
- The name of the journal.
- Issued number.
- Pages.
For example:
Kudryavtsev OM (2007). Social rehabilitation. Sociologicheskiy Vestnik, 10, 3-7.
If you need to refer to the web resource where the article was published, then here are your nuances. In particular, there may be a question with the date of publication – it is not always indicated. Therefore, it is better to discuss this topic with the teacher in advance: it is possible that it will be arranged without a date. If the teacher is adamant – you can contact the author of the publication.
How to deal with footnotes
The requirements of the APA style are the minimal use of footnotes. If you cannot do without them, American psychologists recommend that the numbers of explanations were not put after the dash. But after other punctuation marks – you are welcome. Footnotes can be placed at the bottom of the page or placed at the end of all work on a separate sheet.
Importance of deep inspection
Folk wisdom says: “greet him according to his clothes, take leave according to what he knows”. Proper design of your work according to all the requirements of the APA style means that it is in a trend. And this is the first step for the teacher to get respect for the fruit of your sleepless nights. If you looked through a pile of literature and read publications of leading foreign authors in the original language, but you are too lazy to strictly observe the requirements – then you will put the skids under to your work: the score will be lowered.
For the work to be appreciated, you should carefully read it before handing it over:
- Make sure that there are no misprints.
- Correct stylistics if necessary.
- Check for compliance with formatting requirements.
Admit that the time spent on self-testing is trifles in comparison with the volume of tasks that have been performed by you. So, do not rush, concentrate.
As for the title of the work, American psychologists recommend limiting themselves to twelve words – in their opinion, this is quite enough. Less – excellent, more – not worth it. So, the aphorism about the brevity is the soul of wit, it is worth remembering and applying.
Act according to the analogy
If you have an interest in this topic after reading our recommendations on using the APA style – be sure to continue its study. For a better understanding, use the samples of works designed in this style, and act by analogy.
