The APA Style Guide

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) is a style guide that is used extensively for psychology and the behavioral and social sciences. It is also commonly used in other fields such as health and medicine. 

It was developed in 1929, starting as a brief journal article. It was a collaborative effort that included psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers who came together under the auspices of the National Research Council. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was created to promote scholarship by establishing common sense and rigorous templates for scientific communication. 

They wanted to ensure that scientific knowledge was communicated according to standardized codes that would lighten reading comprehension among scientific peers and in communication between scientists and general readers. This goal was later warmly accepted by scholars throughout social and behavioral sciences, who also valued clear scientific communication. 

For students and scholars, APA is frequently used as a style guide for research writing in terms of writing research papers, master's theses, and articles. It is one of the style guides that are easier to follow in terms of in-text citations and references. The formatting guidelines of the APA are widely used as a rubric for academic writing in general. In this article, I focus on the basics of in-text citation and referencing format.

APA in modern scholarship

Today, In addition to its specific reference and citation rules, the APA provides guidelines on word usage,  grammar, and other stylistic considerations. Another issue that is covered by the APA is inclusivity. This refers to using language that respects diverse populations in terms of race, religion, and gender. 

Here is a list of the various things covered by the APA: 

1. Ethical guidelines for human and animal participants in experiments

2. Guidelines for ethical reporting of data

3. Guidelines on preparing scholarly manuscripts for publication

4. Guidelines for using punctuation and other style elements like spelling

5. Guidelines for crediting sources

Considered altogether, these things amount to what is known as style. Style refers to “the rules or guidelines a publisher observes to ensure clear, consistent presentation in scholarly articles.” (APA 6, p. 87). 

When writing your research paper or manuscript, APA should be seen as a manual that provides a foundation for proper scientific and academic communication. It is quite effective in helping writers express their ideas in a manner that is clear and concise while being inclusive. 

However, here, we provide a brief overview of the requirements of APA formatting according to the latest edition of APA: 7th edition APA Publication Manual (2020). We primarily consider:

In-Text Citations. This refers to sources when they are mentioned within the text.

References. This describes sources that are located in the reference list, which is usually found at the end of the text.

Formatting in-text citations APA style

APA 7 in-text citations are now much more straightforward and represent an improvement over past editions. Past editions required drastically different approaches for references that had less than three authors versus those with more than three authors. Now, there are clear-cut differences between one to two authors and more than two authors, which makes it easier.

For one author, only the author's name and year are required. For example, (Hawthorne, 2006). In cases where the citation begins the sentence, only the year is included in parentheses. For example, "Hawthorne (2006) claimed that . . ."

For two authors, an ampersand (&) is used to separate them: (Hawthorne & Clay, 2010) or Hawthorne and clay (2010). For more than two authors, "et al." should be used after the first author: (Hawthorne et al., 2013) or Hawthorne et al. (2013).

The table below provides a quick summary of the above rules:

Formatting references APA style

APA has a comprehensive guideline for referencing a wide range of sources. However, here we provide only a brief and general overview. For most entries, the author's last name should be included first, with only the initials of the first name placed after the last name and separated by a comma. 

According to the type of reference, other details such as the title of the reference, name of the journal or publisher, and issue, volume, and page numbers are included. The table below provides formatting examples for some of the most common references:

The differences between APA 6 and APA 7 

In its attempt to stay updated, the APA regularly updates its manual. The latest edition is APA 7, which differs in many ways from APA 6. The major differences we are looking at are in relation to references. The two biggest ones include rules for referencing 1) multiple  authors and 2) referencing books. 

1. Referencing more than seven authors

APA 6. When a reference has more than seven authors, list only the first seven authors in the references list followed by et al. 

APA 7. List all authors up to 20. 

2. Referencing more than two authors in-text

APA 6. For in-text citations, include up to six authors the first time the reference is made. 

Example: (Smith, Janey, Keys, & James, 2019) 

3. Referencing books in the reference list

APA 6. When citing a book, always include the publisher’s city or state.

Example: Kaufman, J. (2020). The Personal MBA. New York, NY: Portfolio / Penguin.

APA 7. When citing books, do not include the publisher’s city or state. 

Example: Kaufman, J. (2020). The Personal MBA. Portfolio / Penguin.

Two Free Resources For the APA Style Guide

There are so many rules and details associated with APA (or for that matter any other major style guide), it makes no sense to memorize them all.  Obviously, the best sourcebook for the APA style guide would be the book itself: The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition. 

However, the price ranges from 24 to 54 USD for paperback and hardback editions, respectively. In place of purchasing the book, there are a few free online resources that you can use:

The APA website itself

APA has a website that provides detailed examples of various reference formats more comprehensive than what we provide here. You can take a look for yourself: APA Style

Purdue Owl

Purdue OWL is a website run by Purdue University. In addition to APA, it provides details on a number of the most popular style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). You can consult their APA guide here: Purdue OWL.

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Final thoughts on using the APA style guide

APA is not just a set of rules to follow to write a paper. Instead, it provides guidelines that make research or academic writing easy to conduct and easy to read. It is a well-respected and widely used style guide in both the social sciences and health sciences. Your ability to use it correctly and consistently will decide whether or not you are taken seriously as an academic. 

The focus should not be on memorizing every detail of APA formatting though. Instead, it would be best to familiarize yourself with it and make use of resources and tools that ensure that it is used correctly.

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2024, August 08). The APA Style Guide. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/apa-a-brief-format-style-guide