APA style and citations for dummies - Joe Giampalmi 2021
Approaching APA updates: mindset
Updating and debugging: APA seventh edition
Conforming to standards: APA and the academic environment
By this point in your life, you’ve learned that living requires adjustments. For example, if your university changes a graduation requirement, you make the adjustment; you find a way. APA’s seventh addition updates and clarifications require you to adjust. If you used APA in high school, you may have used the sixth edition, but seventh edition changes apply to you. Clarify with your professor that APA’s seventh edition, released in pre-pandemic October 2019, is required.
If APA is your first style guide, no previous edition adjustments are required. If the seventh edition is your first love affair with a documentation style, it’s like the old custom of an arranged marriage; you have no choice. But your chances of being successful with APA are greater than those shown by research on the success of arranged marriages. APA’s formatting is as intuitive as navigating your cell phone. As you use your phone, you become more adept at finding features, even those that you only use occasionally. You’ll find that adjusting to APA is similar to adjusting to new technology.
Learning a documentation style requires perfecting citations and references. APA citations, 99 percent standardized, require that you list the author and date. The few citation exceptions include “personal communication,” such as citing class lectures and experts’ communications (see Chapter 10). APA requires that you cite all source information and coordinating citations in references. I describe information that doesn’t require citing (“common knowledge”) in Chapter 10.
As you research your sources, you should study citations and references — including non-APA styles. Using citations is like saying “thank you” to the author who provides you with the source. If you’ve learned to say “thank you,” you can learn to cite sources. Every researcher that you reference in your writing deserves (and requires) a “thank you.”
Correctly listing your research sources in the reference section will frustrate you, but you can learn how to do it. Remember how you learned the intricacies of your phone, software updates, or a new video game? With practice and patience, you can learn formatting references. You can learn anything that you’re determined to learn. You only fail when you stop trying. Assume the mindset that you can and will learn how to reference formatting, and then help your peers learn it.
To learn how to use APA references, initially prefer sources requiring less complex formatting such as books and websites with DOIs. (Review elements of a source in Chapter 10.) Begin by researching books, reference works, websites, and popular journals.
When you reference, create a to-do checklist using the headings in bold format that I discuss in the section, “Eyeing the Changes with Citations and References,” earlier in this chapter. Similarly, create a to-do checklist from reference guidelines in Chapter 12. You have been successful academically because you can read and follow directions. If you as a college student can cook and follow recipe directions, you can learn APA. If you can’t cook and you eat at fast food restaurants, study this book while you are eating. Hang out all day and study APA.
If you time-manage your research papers, you have the advantage of a safety net to review your citations and reference sources. Schedule conferences with your professor and your writing center to review your documentation. Crawl before you walk, and take small steps before you take large steps; create your to-do checklists for updates and basic formatting, and APA will automatically update on your mind’s hard drive. You can do what you commit to do and what you’re determined to do.
Seventh edition update on the publication process
The seventh edition provides publication guidelines — for dissertations, theses, and journal articles. Because you aren’t likely writing one of these documents, APA offers you little help with publication. But this book offers you help if you want to publish as an undergraduate.
APA offers some publishing advice that applies to professional scholars and also to you. Avoid vanity-writing publications, sometimes called predatory services, that request payment when you submit your writing or when they provide you with editorial services.
If you want to self-publish (pay a publishing service to print your book), do some research to ensure the service meets your needs. Self-publishing can easily cost more than $5,000. If you read, write, and fulfill commitments — prerequisites for succeeding in college — you can also publish in college. You have an affiliated publication waiting to hear what you have to say: your college newspaper. Contact your newspaper’s editor and ask if they would consider your article for publication. Get past the fact that the editor may say no and reject your offer. If you haven’t learned to overcome rejection yet, you haven’t been trying hard enough.