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APA Style
About the APA
APA is the common acronym for the American Psychological Association,
which is a professional organization that represents psychologists in
the United States. The mission of the APA is to advance psychology as a
science and profession.
The APA publishes the Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association, which defines APA Style. The
most recent edition of the Publication Manual is the Fifth Edition,
which was published in July of 2001.
About APA Style
APA Style is the style of choice for numerous
professional journals, especially those in the social sciences,
including the dozens of journals published by the APA itself. Many
universities and other institutions require that students prepare term
papers, theses, and dissertations in APA Style.
The most significant change in the fifth edition of
the Manual was the expansion of details regarding how to specify
reference entries for online and electronic sources.
APA Style specifies details about many different
aspects of document preparation, including:
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Editorial style, which specifies details of
punctuation, abbreviations, and language usage. |
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How reference entries for
many different sources are cited, both in the body of the document
and in the Works Cited section. |
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The appearance of
documents, including page margins, paragraph spacing, font usage,
figure and table inclusion, and related details. |
For more information about
writing documents in APA
Style, see our APA Style Details page.
About Software Products for
APA Style
Most students and professionals now use software to
help them prepare documents in APA Style. There are a number of programs
you can buy to help you with creating and editing documents, and to help
in preparation of reference entries and citations.
Here at Writing Resources, we've tested and compared
all of the popular software packages for preparing APA-style documents.
We recommend StyleEase for APA Style as our top choice for students writing
term papers, theses, and dissertations.
Our complete list of
comparisons and recommendations is here.
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