Errors Made on the First Writing Assignment in PSYC 2210
Here are errors that were made by students during the first summer session, 2011.
 Documents which did not follow the specified file naming convention. Several
students sent me documents names “References.doc.” When these are saved to
my hard drive the overwrite one another, so all but the most recent document is
lost. If that most recent document does not include, in the body of the document,
the student’s name, then I don’t even know whose document it is. I do take steps
to prevent this from happening, but when I take such action I also take away a
point for not having followed the instructions.
 Do put “References” centered on the first line of the reference list. It should not
be in all upper case.
 Volume Numbers and Issue Numbers
o Do not type “Vol” before the volume number, do set it in italic font.
 Do not give an issue number when the journal is paginated by volume
rather than by issue. How do you know whether or not a journal is
paginated by volume?
 Do use Ctrl-T to produce hanging indentation. Do not put a carriage return at
the end of any line except the last line of each reference. Do not use tabs to
produce hanging indentation.
 When citing an edited book, you
 Should identify the editors
 Should not provide page numbers
 Having fewer than four references published since 2000.
 Titles of Articles and Titles of Journals
 Italicize the titles of journals and their volume numbers, not the titles of
journal articles, and not the authors’ names.
 Do not use all upper case for the titles of articles
 Do not capitalize the first letter in major words in the titles of journal
articles or the titles of books.
 But do capitalize the first word.
 And do capitalize the first word that follows a colon or a “ – ” (blank,
dash, blank) in a title.
 And do capitalize proper nouns, such as “Asia.”
o Do capitalize major words in journal titles – for example, type “Journal of
Scatological Research,” not “Journal of scatological research.”
o Species names should be set in italic font – for example, Homo sapiens.
 Page Numbers
 Do not give page numbers when citing an entire book, do when citing one
article in an edited book.
o Do give page numbers for journal articles, do not type “pp” before the
page numbers.
 Name of the Publisher
 Do not give for journal articles
o Do give for books (and the city and state too)
 Spelling errors – use the spelling checker in Word.
Here are errors made by students in previous semesters, but not this semester.

Email that did not include an appropriate subject line: “PSYC 2210: ……” My
mail server segregates mail with the appropriate subject line into a special folder
to which I attend. If you send me email without an appropriate subject line it is
likely to get buried in my Inbox or may never even reach my Inbox, being
discarded as spam.
 Using a 10 point font. APA recommends Times Roman or Courier. I prefer Arial
for my handouts, but stick to Times New Roman for my manuscripts. To set the
font: Ctrl-A, Format, Font and select Times New Roman, Regular, 12.
 Changing font faces – use one font face throughout the manuscript.
 Having fewer than five references.
 Do not number the items in the reference list.
 Authors Names
o Give authors’ last name, initials – not full name. For example, type
“Wuensch, K. L.” not “Wuensch, Karl Louis.”
o If there are seven or fewer authors, you must list all of the authors for each
reference, not just the first author.
o If there are eight or more authors, list the first six, then three ellipses, and
then the last author's name. For example, suppose that Wuensch
published an article with ten coauthors. You would list the names like this:
Wuensch, K. L., Carey, A. I., Carroll, L. S., Wundt, W. M., Fechner, G. T.,
Weber, E. H., ... von Helmholtz, H. L. F. (2027)."
o When there are two or more authors, put an ampersand before the name
of the last author.
o Do put a blank space between author’s first initial and second initial.
 URL
o You should NOT give a url if it points to a database which is not available
to the general public. See
http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/docs2210/APA-References.htm .
o No more than 10% of your references should be to web documents which
do not also appear in scholarly journals. You should focus on journal
articles and books.
Line Spacing
The manuscript should be double spaced throughout. The easiest way to set
the paragraph format to double space in Word is to select the target text (Ctrl-A, holding
down the Ctrl key while you hit the A key will select the entire document) and then
Ctrl-2. Sometimes this causes problems with page breaks and page numbering, so I
recommend an alternative method. Select the entire document (if you have entered any
text) and then pull up the paragraph dialog box. Set the Line spacing to At least 28
pt.
Journal Articles: Paginated by Issue or by Volume?
If the article starts on a page number higher than 100, be suspicious. Look up
the article via our library’s e-journal portal. For example, look at the info you get when
you look up Evolution and Behavior. As you can see below, issue 1 runs from page 1 to
page 78, issue two from page 79 to page 156, and so it. It is paginated by volume, not
by issue. You should not include the issue number in the reference.