APA style and citations for dummies - Joe Giampalmi 2021

Focusing on the why and how: audience and purpose
Writing for success: APA writing style
Earning applause: APA writing for the academic audience

In this part …

Understand why parts of speech aren’t created equal and that your success as a writer parallels your effective use of verbs and nouns.

Discover page navigation conventions that pace readers through dashes and slashes, semicolons and colons, parenthesis and brackets, italics and ellipsis — and reveal the story behind the cases.

Find out how to create a plan for lifetime literacy success.

Recall childhood lessons that apply to understanding bias-free language that respects race, age, disabilities, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, and social economic references.

Apply revision strategies like a professional writer — strategies that can help you say more with less.

Understand why Mark Twain allegedly said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time,” in reference to word-reduction strategies for multi-word verbs, superfluous verb endings, “ly” adverbs, and adjective clauses and phrases.

Chapter 5. Writing for success: APA writing style

IN THIS CHAPTER

Identifying your audience, purpose, approach, and focus

Using transitions effectively

Determining the right tone for your writing

Ensuring that your language is respectful

Some academics identify writing as the highest intellectual activity performed by humans, an argument not endorsed by math and reading teachers. Writing, a brain add-on skill, requires thinking, planning, organizing, and revising — creating meaning with 26 letters.

Writing also requires regular reading and the accumulation of life experiences. Successful writing demands the same type of commitment and practice as is required by an athlete or musician. Without commitment and regular practice, athletes, musicians, and writers lose rhythm, flow, and instinctual patterns. Without commitment, you’re unlikely to become a successful writer, just as you’re unlikely to become a successful athlete or musician. With commitment, you can become all three.

Peer-reviewed scientific journals represent the most common form of publication for professors and other scholars. Student papers represent the most common form of scholarly contributions by undergraduates and high school students. APA’s standard for all scholarly papers includes “an original contribution” and “appropriate citations to the works of others.”

APA writing emphasizes clear communication of scholarly ideas with precise and concise word choices, organized in a logical structure. Characteristics of successful academic writing for college and high school students include

· Information-based content

· Predictable structure and organization

· Subject-action-verb sentence patterns

· Appropriate graphic organizers

· Limited compositional risk strategies

Smooth-flowing, concise writing, recommended by APA and professional writing organizations, begins when you have identified your specific audience and a clear writing purpose. In this chapter, I explain academic writing strategies and how to adapt the APA writing style to your audience, purpose, approach, and focus. I also provide techniques for smooth-flowing text with appropriate tone and respectful language. Switch your phone to mute, position your water bottle, unstrap your backpack, and get your game on.

Use the following Mount Rushmore of APA strategies in your writing:

· Address the academic audience with a formal, informational writing style.

· Design a writing message with laser focus.

· Use transitional strategies to connect ideas.

· Prioritize unbiased, respectful language.

Focusing on the why and how: audience and purpose

No creative person knew his audience better than Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose biography is portrayed in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster). Jobs created an iPhone for an audience who didn’t know they wanted or needed one. He anticipated that his audience (the consumer) was willing to pay budget-breaking costs, sign contracts for expensive monthly plans, and upgrade as frequently as college tuition increases occur. Jobs addressed his audience by providing them devices they could navigate based on their background. You as a writer are similarly required to address your audience with the information they need based on their background on the topic.

As the author of this book, I anticipated your needs as my audience. I assumed that you know of Steve Jobs, and that you’re one of 98 percent of adults who own a cell phone. I chose not to reference a brick phone, rotary phone, or can-and-string communication — technologies of your grandparents. I anticipated that you connected APA with GPA and that you realize the real world lacks spring break and class cuts. I’m confident you can write to fulfill your academic purposes, understand the basics of the research process, and comprehend APA vocabulary such as citation, reference, source, and especially plagiarism.

Most college writing assignments identify the audience and purpose, which then influences your language, style, tone, and supporting evidence. The following sections cover audience and purpose in more detail.

Academic and assignment audience

Because you’re an academic writer following APA guidelines, your success depends on understanding your academic audience. First, you’re writing for your professors who are knowledgeable and well read and who thrive on thinking about

· The challenge of new positions on a topic

· A new slant to an old position

· Answers to questions and questions to answers

· Challenges to the status quo

Your professors expect you to think at a college level. When you don’t, you can expect one of two minimal grades that rhyme with “B.”

In addition to having professors as your audience, you are frequently required to address a secondary audience for an assignment, including the following:

· Community leaders — for example, convincing them of the value of trash-to-steam plants

· Government leaders — for example, justifying to Congress the benefits of a national service plan that reduces college debt

· School leaders — for example, convincing your athletic department to fund e-gaming

· The public — for example, persuading (or dissuading) the public of the environmental benefits of plant-based foods

Your secondary audience expects language that speaks to them. Both that audience and your professors expect timely academic sources, evidence-based support, and topic analysis demonstrating critical thinking.

Avoid thinking that your professors comprehend your writing because they’re smarter than you. You as the writer assume responsibility for expressing ideas clearly to your reader. The reader doesn’t assume responsibility for deciphering the writer’s message. Your writing ideas must be clear to you as a writer before they’re clear to your readers. A peer editor can help you identify language that is unclear to your audience.

The following questions can help you identify your audience and ensure that your writing is easy for them to understand (feel free to amend as you see fit):

· Can your audience be identified by characteristics such as age, education, interests, and topic background?

· Does your opening engage their interest in the topic?

· Do you intellectually challenge your audience (including your professor)?

· Is the audience background underestimated or overestimated?

· What value does the topic offer your readers?

· Is vocabulary consistent with their understanding of the topic?

· Are writing examples and references relevant to them?

· Does the writing answer their anticipated questions?

High-achieving students read extensively to complement their writing. They also reference their readings regularly in their writing, which impresses professors (their primary audience) and usually earns exceptional grades. Reading and writing are as important to high-achieving students as cell phones and keys; college students can’t survive without either pair. (Flip to Chapter 9 for more on the importance of reading and writing.)

Purpose

Steve Jobs analyzed his audience and worked with a clear purpose; he valued an innovator legacy more than a financial portfolio. His purpose was to disrupt innovation, where art meets technology. He prioritized product coolness.

Your writing success also depends on a clear writing purpose, one that exceeds earning a grade. If you’ve sarcastically preceded an assignment with the question, “What’s the purpose?” then you actually asked a useful question to focus your writing. Traditional writing purposes include informing, explaining, analyzing, persuading, arguing, and qualifying. Assignments frequently identify purpose as the key writing task, which usually includes a form of arguing or persuading. “What’s the purpose?” isn’t a question to ask your professor in class.

Determine your reader’s purpose by completing the statement, “The purpose of this paper is to argue …” Examples of successful and focused purposes that complete the statement include

· Environmentally friendly strategies for improving mass transportation

· Influences of sibling position on leadership

· Justification of payment to Division I collegiate athletes

· Economic benefits of careers in the trades

· Improvements in U.S. health care delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Answers to the following questions help determine your writing purpose:

· Is the purpose focused, neither too general nor too specific?

· Does the purpose appeal to the academic audience?

· Does the purpose address a position that challenges the thinking of the academic audience?

· Does the purpose offer the reader a new approach to a topic or a new way to look at an old approach?

· Does the purpose fulfill readers’ expectations?