APA style and citations for dummies - Joe Giampalmi 2021

Smooth sailing: transitions and flow
Writing for success: APA writing style
Earning applause: APA writing for the academic audience

Obsessed with watersports, I recently enrolled in Sunfish sailing lessons. I became proficient at climbing back into the boat after constantly flipping myself into the Gulf of Mexico. I transitioned from sailing with my instructor to sailing solo. I then transitioned to tacking, jibbing, and coming about — strategies that kept me sailing smoothly on the water rather than in it. Without transitions, I would have been dead in the water.

Writing, like sailing, requires successful transitions to remain on course. With transitions, your writing flows smoothly and clarifies relationships between ideas. Without transitions, readers lack guidance to build relationships among ideas, like a pile of unconnected toy-building blocks.

Smooth writing requires transitional strategies at the organizational, paragraph, and sentence levels. Professor comments indicative of successful transitions include well developed, good flow, and good focus. Comments indicative of being dead in the water include lacks flow, choppy, and needs restructuring. Additionally, if a peer reader expresses difficulty in following your flow of ideas, you have an organizational and transitional issue. The following sections explore transitional strategies in greater detail.

Organizational flow

Transitioning begins with a structural organization that flows throughout the writing — from the beginning, through the middle, and to the ending. You can initially establish flow by separating the beginning and ending from the middle. The beginning, or introduction, includes

· A title and first sentence that attract readers to the topic.

· Title: Pulitzer Prize Author Illustrates Wright Brothers’ Literacy-Rich Childhood

· First sentence: “Choose good parents and grow up in Ohio,” said Wilbur Wright, offering advice for success in life.

· Information about the topic that teases out questions to be answered.

· The names Susan and Milton (a bishop of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ) lack the notoriety of those of their famous sons, but the aviation achievements of their sons Wilbur and Orville are directly attributed to their parents’ home environment, which encouraged curiosity, perseverance, problem solving, attention to detail, and intellectual development.

· An indication of the topic approach and focus.

· In addition to their parents providing love and emotional security, they also modeled strong reading, writing, and inventiveness.

Ending strategies include summary, reflection, significance, and final message.

· Summary: In the past few years, our differences as Americans have defined us on race, religion, social justice, and political beliefs. America owes more to those thousands of faces who were murdered pursuing the opportunities America has offered. We can’t return to the carefree, spontaneous America of September 10th, but we can return to the compassionate and united America of September 12th.

· Reflection: College freshmen and seniors reflect similar anxiety — freshmen fear the unknown coming into college; seniors fear the unknown going out.

· Significance: FDR’s leadership modeled building trust with voters, choosing effective leaders, reaching decisions collaboratively, trusting that Americans wanted to work, and intervening when capitalism failed. More importantly, he taught Congress that helping people was a higher priority than being Democrat or Republican.

· Final message: The argument required to insist your child wear a helmet is less stressful than the nightmare if your child is involved in a bicycle accident while not wearing a helmet.

The middle section of the project, the argument development, represents your major challenge and the major influence of your grade. Begin your argument (the beginning of your middle) with a sentence that includes your claim or thesis. Present your support (your research) from worst to first, saving your best evidence for last — like ending a meal with dessert.

Successful organizational flow includes a clearly delineated ending of the beginning, beginning and ending of the middle, and beginning of the ending — more beginnings and endings than the love life of a teenager. Within that organization, develop a plan for delivering content in patterns such as chronologically, general to specific, cause and effect, and support and implication. To maintain flow, connect your ideas and support them with your focus. I discuss these patterns in Chapter 8.

Transition strategies

Think of transitions as bridges that connect your paths on campus — shuttles, short walks, skateboards, bicycles, and elevators. Your day crashes if you miss a shuttle, walk into a detour, blow a wheel, or get trapped in an elevator. Similarly, your writing flow crashes if ideas fail to connect. APA warns that lack of transitions may indicate that “you have abandoned an argument or theme prematurely.”

Key transitional strategies, and their applications that indicate continuing an argument, include

· Similarity — also, furthermore, likewise, and in addition to

· Furthermore, Wilbur described their challenge as “the ability to ride with the wind, to balance and steer in the air.”

· Contrast — but, however, and on the contrary

· But surprisingly, Bishop Wright allowed the brothers to occasionally miss school if the boys were engaged in a worthy scientific project or an interesting book.

· Summary — finally, in conclusion, and to sum up

· Finally, the Wright brothers’ success was achieved with home education that encouraged intellectual curiosity and modeled the most basic literacy skills: “Everyone in the house read all the time.”

· Time — next, afterwards, later, and initially

· Later they built the first “man-carrying glider” for less than fifteen dollars in a room above their bicycle shop.

· Sequence — first, second, finally, next, and eventually

· Eventually they achieved a series of successful manned flights.

· Cause and effect — consequently, therefore, and as a result

· Their argument over propeller direction resulted first in each taking the other’s side and then realizing that they needed two propellers rotating in opposite directions.

These strategies transition the development of arguments within paragraphs as well as between paragraphs.

Additional indicators of transitions include indentations, headings, subheadings, and sidebars. Transitions help your reader navigate your sea of ideas.

Answers to the following questions help you determine transitions and flow:

· Does every paragraph contribute to the flow of the focus?

· Does the topic flow follow an organized, logical pattern?

· Does every paragraph show evidence of a transitional strategy, explicit or implied?

· Do the paragraphs show relationships with preceding and succeeding ones?

As you read leisurely, read from the perspective of a writer. As you read, identify the writer’s transitional strategies.