Provided below is information about "APA" writing style. If what I post here does not clarify enough, please email me and I will go into more detail. For now, here are the generalities:

APA Style: American Psychological Association style is the main writing style used in the field of Psychology (among many others: in fact, it is now the most commonly used writing style). Your textbook is written in APA style, and so are my lectures.

Why is a writing style necessary? When you are researching a topic, and you "borrow" information from something you read, you MUST give credit to the source of your information. Formal writing requires that you do this in an organized manner; thus, the different writing styles.

Two definitions that you need to know:

Citation: this is the "reference" in the body of your paper.

References: this is the term for the complete information that is on the last page of your paper. In other writing styles it is called a bibliography or a "Works Cited" page. In APA style, it is simply called "References."

 Understand that any writing style is complex, but because this is a beginning-level course, I am going to keep this simple, so that you get a feel for it. Just be aware that in future courses, you may be asked to use APA style in a more in-depth manner (especially in a Psych course). Because the information I am providing is intended to be basic, please do NOT use APA information from the Internet, a reference book, or other source (other than the APA Writing Manual itself). Sometimes (as with any style) some information is contradictory, and it will get more involved than I want at this point. Just follow the guidelines I give you here, and you will be fine.

APA in the body of the paper (citations):

When citing references in the body of the paper (in the main paper), and paraphrasing (or summarizing) from the information, you need 2 things: The author's last name and the year of publication. These are in parenthesis, with a comma in-between.

For example: Research shows that dogs can fly (Fibber, 2001).

The only exception to this is if you are quoting directly from your source, word-for-word. If you quote directly from the source, you must include the quote in quotation marks and the page number of the information: "One small step for Fido, one giant leap for dogs everywhere!" (Bigfib, 2000, p. 32).

If there are two authors, you include both last names. If there are more than 2, you use the name of the first, and then the term, "et. al." meaning, "and others." (Littlelie, et. al., 1999).

This is all you need to know for the body of your paper. Now for your REFERENCE page! This is the last page of your paper (not included in the min/max number of required pages) and gives the full information on any resource that you used in your paper. There are a few differences in APA style from others.

1) You use the author's last name and first initials ONLY. (Even if you know the first names of the author, you still only use the last name and initials.) If there is more than one author, you list ALL of them here.

2) After the author, you list the year of publication in parenthesis, followed by a period. It will look like this: Bigfib, J. A., Littlefib, K. M., and Mediumfib, S. Q. (1865).

3) Next comes the title of the book or article. This title is in ITALICS if it is a book, and NOT in italics if it is a journal/periodical article. Note that ONLY the first word of the title is capitalized (and the first word after a colon), and none of the other words, unless the word is a proper noun. This is one of the "unique" parts of APA style.

Here is an example: Fleasonme, N. O. (2003). If dogs could fly: A fairy tail.

(remember, the title should be in italics if this is a book).

4) Next, if it is a journal article, is the name of the journal/periodical. The name is in italics here, and everything is capitalized as normal. Next comes the date or volume/issue of the publication. If this is a book, then go to the next step:

5) The publisher and city of publication. Mayfield Publishers:New York, NY. (You do not need a publisher if it is a journal/periodical article.)

The complete reference for a book will look like this:

Fleasonme, N. O. (2003). If dogs could fly: A fairy tail. Dog Press Publishing: Barstow, CA.

The complete reference for a journal/periodical will look like this:

Dogscanfly, H. I. (1967). The magic world of airborne pooches. Pooch Pilots 13:2.

Lastly, if this article is from the Internet, then the COMPLETE website will replace the Journal name and date/volume/issue.

On the reference page, all references are alphabetized by author's last name. The second (and subsequent) line is always indented (not possible in html, but in a word processing program, the "hanging indent" feature will accomplish this.) The first line is NOT indented. If you do not know the author's name (in other words, if you have searched and searched and it simply is not available), then alphabetize by the title of the article/book. If you are on the Internet, and there is no title OR author (it doesn't happen often, but every now and then) - make up your own title! I don't mean a "creative" title . . . Just call it "Article on Winged Canines" or something similar that makes sense. Then alphabetize.

One final note: when you are doing a research paper, you cannot have too many citations. I would expect AT LEAST one citation in each paragraph. Also, if you have questions about this writing style, you can check your book for examples: look in the chapters for the citations and in the back of the book ("references") for examples of references.

Please contact me if you have additional, specific questions. Don't forget to use the "Paper Grading Criteria" and remember that you can turn in a rough draft of the paper early for me to look over (AFTER you have corrected it as much as possible using the Paper Grading Criteria). I will return it to you so you can make corrections.