Читать книгу An EasyGuide to APA Style - Regan A. R. Gurung - Страница 26

Do you play cards? Nowadays, you can watch competition card games on TV; one of the most popular is Texas No Limit Hold ‘Em tournaments. If you have watched any of these shows, you have probably heard the announcers say something like, “Texas Hold ‘Em takes a minute to learn but a lifetime to master.” We wish that the rules of English grammar (and APA Style and format) took a minute to learn and then a lifetime to master; alas, it is more complicated (in our opinion). If only it took a minute to learn the rules! When we say a lifetime to master, we do not mean that you have to memorize the rules, but you need to practice the rules and become familiar enough with them that you can avoid embarrassing mistakes (and some memorization is good for the brain, too). In this chapter, we provide plenty of tips on how to avoid those embarrassing (and not-so-embarrassing) writing mistakes.

Of course, entire textbooks and college courses are devoted to grammar and style. Six of our favorite books include Air and Light and Time and Space: How Successful Academics Write (Sword, 2017), Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century (Pinker, 2014), Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English (O’Conner, 1996), Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing (O’Conner, 1999), Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Truss, 2003), and the ever-classic The Elements of Style (Strunk & White, 1979). This chapter is a brief summary of the key components you need to know and practice to be a better writer of APA Style and format. We organize our presentation here around parts of a sentence and parts of speech, and we end with common grammatical mistakes to avoid.