Читать книгу An EasyGuide to APA Style - Regan A. R. Gurung - Страница 10

If you are in college, congratulations—we think you made a good choice! That means you have many papers to write in your future. This book is about helping you become a better writer and helping build your confidence in your writing ability. In particular, this book is about helping you learn how to write a scientific paper with precision and objectivity, one in which you are able to communicate accurately your ideas, findings, and interpretations using the type of writing style and format published by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2020). This is a writing style very different from what you likely learned in a high school English class, where you might have learned about narrative, expository, or descriptive styles of writing. Here, we are all about writing in APA Style. To help you become APA-Style compliant, we use plenty of examples, clever subtitles, and any trick we can think of to get your attention so you can learn from this book. In fact, the book is purposely spiral bound so it can lie flat on your desk next to your computer or in your lap as you work on your APA papers. Note that the spiral binding has been a feature of our book since our first edition.

Regardless of whether you are writing a paper as a psychology, sociology, or nursing student, if a professor asks you to write in APA Style, you are asked to do so to help communicate your ideas in writing in a way that will be more easily understood by others in your field. APA Style reflects the scientific method in that its goals are precision and objectivity in writing, as well as standardization of style and format. Using APA Style helps keep our personal style and eccentricities from affecting our writing and reporting of research. It helps maintain the goal of objectivity in science. Specific content is placed within specific sections and in a particular order, allowing the reader to know exactly where to find particular pieces of information about your research. Following APA Style and format, you will be able to provide the reader with a convincing argument that features clear and concise statements and logical development of your ideas. You will find a greater appreciation for the APA Publication Manual once you start reading articles for your assignments. Then you will start to notice how helpful it is to have a particular type of writing style and format from one paper to the next, expediting your reading and understanding of the material.

Let us introduce two of the more common terms applied when using the APA Publication Manual to write your papers: APA Style and APA format. For some assignments, you might be told to “write in APA Style”; others might say to “use APA format,” or you might just hear, “Follow the Publication Manual.” You may be confused by these different instructions. What does it all mean?