Punctuation Marks Are Your Friends
Some authors find punctuation marks mystifying, intimidating, or annoying. So many rules about when to use , . ; ] ? : — (or !. The Punctuation section in the 6th edition of the APA Publication Manual...
View ArticleAfter the Colon, APA Style: Capital or lowercase?
In APA style, should the first word following a colon begin with a capital letter? Well, it depends. If the colon introduces a list or phrase that is not a complete sentence, the first word should be...
View ArticleTips for Matching APA-Style Citations to Your Reference List
Say you’ve got a 50-page APA-style paper with tons of in-text citations and a reference list that’s five pages long and you need to make sure that (a) every source in the references is cited in the...
View ArticleScholarly Writing Should Not Be Fluffy
Sometimes writers try to make their scholarly work look more impressive and important by making the writing “fancier” than it needs to be. One very extremely common way they do this is more often than...
View Article“Since” Is Not “Because”
In speech or informal writing, we often use the word since to mean “because.” She used a lot of sunblock since she wanted to prevent skin cancer. That’s okay—in speech or informal writing. Listeners or...
View ArticleWhat Does “Modified APA Style” Mean?
Journals have their own ways of doing things. I frequently edit for clients who are submitting articles to journals that ask authors to use a “modified APA style” for citations and reference lists....
View ArticleFormatting Lists in APA Style
Making lists in APA style is easy, as long as you pay attention to two things: formatting and parallelism. Today let’s look at formatting. Say each element in your list consists of a whole sentence or...
View ArticleMaking Your List Elements Parallel in APA Style
Earlier this week we looked at formatting lists in APA style. That’s the easy part of making a list. The part that seems to trip writers up is making all the list elements parallel “syntactically and...
View ArticleIn APA: t Test or t-Test?
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate this term for a statistical test? In APA style answer is straightforward: When the term is used as a noun, it should be unhyphenated: results of the t test When the...
View ArticleIn-Text Citations, APA Style: Just the Basics
APA style does in-text citations a little differently from other styles (e.g., Chicago) you may be more familiar with. This post covers only the very basics. For more details, see the APA Publication...
View Article
