INSTRUCTIONS:
Read the following text about WRITING IN APA STYLE, when you have
understood the writing system, please list down your PRELIMENARY READING
LIST according to this style/system.
The fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001)
provides documentation advice for writers in the social sciences. Written primarily for authors
preparing manuscripts for professional publication in scholarly journals, the manual discusses
manuscript content and organization, writing style, and manuscript preparation. It also offers
advice for student writers in an appendix.
The Publication Manual instructs writers to document quotations, paraphrases, summaries, and
other information from sources as follows: "Document your study throughout the text by citing by
author and date the works you used in your research. This style of citation briefly identifies the
source for readers and enables them to locate the source of information in the alphabetical
reference list at the end of the article" (p. 207). When using APA style, consult the Publication
Manual for general style requirements (e.g., style for metric units) and for advice on preparing
manuscripts and electronic texts. This chapter follows the conventions of APA citation style.
The Publication Manual gives guidelines for making in-text references to print sources. The
following section shows how you can apply the same principles to citing online sources in your
text.
Box 6.1
Using Italics and underlining in APA style
APA style recommends the use of italics, rather than underlining, for
certain elements (e.g., book and journal titles). Use underlining only if
your instructor requires it or if your word-processing program can't
produce italics. However, the use of underlining to represent italics
becomes a problem when you compose texts for online publication. On
the World Wide Web, underlining in a document indicates that the
underlined word or phrase is an active hypertext link. (All HTML editing
programs automatically underline any text linked to another hypertext or
Web site.)
When composing Web documents, avoid underlining. Instead, use italics
for titles, for emphasis, and for words, letters, and numbers referred to as
such. When you write with programs such as email that don’t allow
italics, type an underscore mark _like this_ before and after text you
would otherwise italicize or underline.
Go to the Internet and log onto this address http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite6.html
for further reading on this issue of APA Writing Style.