APA style and citations for dummies - Joe Giampalmi 2021

Conquering college comp: essay basics
Understanding first year writing: APA essays and reaction papers
Perfecting presentation: beginnings, endings, and other writings

In this chapter

Encountering college essays

Exploring nonfiction genres

Reacting to readings

Fulfilling format requirements

Research papers are like fine dining; essays and reaction papers are like fast food. Both experiences are necessary for the health and development of college students.

Your research paper provides an extensive academic exercise resulting in new findings in a field of your choice. As a professional scholar-in-training, you contribute new insight to the academic community. Within the parameters of APA guidelines, you excavate knowledge using digging tools comparable to those of a civil engineer. Transitioning from research papers, essays, and reaction papers requires laser focus, precision pacing, and APA adaptions.

APA developed guidelines for professional scholars to submit their scientific research for publication, but essays, reaction papers, and similar message-focused projects require less extensive guidelines and formatting. APA abdicated responsibility for shorter papers, and professors and university departments accepted that responsibility for standardizing submission requirements.

In this chapter, I align the APA writing style and guidelines with essays and reaction papers. I provide default formatting for the title page and page design when APA or your professor doesn’t provide them.

As a regular reminder, your professor’s assignment guidelines supersede both APA’s guidelines and the guidelines that I offer you in this book.

Conquering college comp: essay basics

Writing a research paper is like running a marathon in the dark; you face many obstacles and frequently must reorient your path. The essay is like a sprint in the park; you can get sidetracked frequently and stray off topic, but your success depends on finding your way to the finish line.

The essay, college’s first gatekeeper assignment, fast tracks the writing demands of the research paper — like transitioning from driving a semi to riding a skateboard.

Schools that adopt unabridged APA guidelines for serious research also adopt a lighter version for essay writing. General adherence to APA guidelines includes writing style, plagiarism policies, citations, and references (when required), as well as margins, line spacing, and fonts — guidelines for almost all academic writing.

Think of the college essay as a mini-version of the research paper — requiring good writing skills with the same laser focus, but fewer sources and less development. Your APA challenge will be developing a format that fulfills your professor’s requirements.

Differentiating essays from research writing

The essay, recognized by many researchers as the single most reliable measurement of college literacy, demonstrates your ability to think, organize thoughts, and express yourself clearly and succinctly. It’s the Snapchat of your academic toolbox.

Many first-year college writing programs require a portfolio of three to four essays that meet department goals and are developed with feedback and revised drafts. Essays introduce to students the writing experiences necessary for college success.

APA guidelines were designed for research writing and adapted for smaller writing projects, including research papers. Table 15-1 shows how research writing differs from essay writing.

TABLE 15-1 Research writing versus essay writing

Chapter 5 developed the principles of academic writing: audience, purpose, focus, approach, transitions, flow, tone, and use of respectful language. Audience and purpose vary with assignments, and first-year writing experiences offer as many variations as your morning campus coffee.

Identifying the fundamentals of writing an essay

The next few sections guide you through the fundamentals of writing an essay, beginning with the often-overlooked process of selecting a topic with high reader value and potential high-grade value for you. I also guide you through writing a thesis, developing support, and establishing tone. This section also explains the importance of writing beyond the traditional five-paragraph essay structure.

Write your essay using the basics of good academic writing, as described in Chapter 5 (which covers active verbs and specific nouns) and Chapter 9. Revise as you write and after you write. Review Chapter 8 for a three-level approach to revising.

Topic

The most important essay decision that determines the success of your essay is deciding on your topic. Within the options of your essay assignment, choose a topic you’re passionate about, or at least a topic you are interested in. Your essay will be less challenging if you avoid abstract and ethical topics such as “Goodness Always Overcomes Evil.” Values are an important part of life, but they are a challenge to support in essays. Also avoid topics that lack opposition such as “Good Health is the Secret to a Good Life.” Would anyone argue for poor health?

You, the writer, accept responsibility to offer readers a message of value for the time they invest in your essay. If you’re bored with the topic as the writer, imagine the boredom your readers will experience.

When you choose an essay topic, ask the following:

· Am I offering the reader something new and interesting?

· What value does this topic have for readers, such as my professor?

· What information is available to support my topic?

· Who opposes my topic and why do they oppose it?

Thesis

The most important sentence you write as a student is your thesis statement, your promise to the reader that determines the purpose and direction of your essay. (By comparison, the most important sentence of a professional writer is the first sentence, the sentence that determines whether or not an editor will buy a piece of writing.) You can create an essay’s thesis statement by completing this sentence: “The purpose of the essay is to argue that…”. Here’s what a thesis statement looks like:

During the 2020 pandemic, K—12 schools struggled with remote learning and discovered many faults and liabilities. The purpose of this essay is to argue that successful strategies for remote learning increased standardized test scores in a number of school districts in 2021.

Support

The difference between a high school essay and a college essay is found in the support for the thesis. Many high school teachers accept opinion. Some high school teachers are just happy that students submitted the essay. College professors hold you more accountable because they teach fewer students than do high school teachers. They expect that essay support includes studies, expert opinions, and data. College support also includes your engagement with sources, as in the examples in Chapter 11. Two major differences between high school essays and college essays are in how well you engage with sources and how well you create a “conversation” among your sources and yourself as the author of the essay.

Tone

Because essays communicate a variety of subtle messages, unlike the research paper, tone is more relevant to essays. Tone, your attitude that accompanies your message, helps you express sarcasm, humor, sympathy, righteousness, satire, and so forth. See Chapter 5 for more detail on tone.

Transitions

Transitions are basic to almost all forms of writing. The fast pace of essays, sprinting from opening to exit, requires numerous bridges for a smooth ride. Flip to Chapter 5 for more information on transitions.

Beyond the five-paragraph essay

You grew up with the five-paragraph essay. It taught you the basic structure of an essay — a beginning, three middle paragraphs, and an ending. But just as the training wheels eventually came off your two-wheeler, expanding on the five-paragraph model became a necessity for navigating the world of college academics. The restrictive “three supporting reasons” of your former life does not meet the needs of complex college writing. Support for thesis statements today requires more than the traditional three paragraphs, and also a combination of long and short paragraphs. The five-paragraph essay belongs in a museum next to artifacts such as the typewriter and tractor-fed printer.