APA style manual guideline

1. APA STYLE MANUAL

2. FEATURES OF WRITING STYLE
• Continuity & Flow
Effective writing is characterized by continuity, the logical consistency
of expression throughout a written work, and by flow, the smooth
cadence of words and sentences. Inconsistencies, contradictions,
omissions, and irrelevancies in your writing style and presentation of
ideas can make your arguments seem less credible. A work that lacks
continuity and flow may seem disorganized or confusing, and details
may seem incomplete or inconsistent.

3. • Transitions
To improve continuity and flow in your writing, check transitions
between sentences, paragraphs, and ideas to ensure that the text is
smooth and clear rather than abrupt or disjointed. When editing your
writing, use additional transitional devices to make it less choppy. Text
Text that sounds choppy or disjointed may indicate that you have
abandoned an argument or theme prematurely—instead consider
amplifying its discussion. Punctuation marks contribute to continuity
and flow by signaling transitions and demonstrating relationships
between ideas.

4. CONT…
Likewise, transitional words and phrases help maintain the flow of
ideas, especially when the material is complex or abstract.
• time links (e.g., “then,” “next,” “after,” “while,” “since”)
• Cause–effect links (e.g., “therefore,” “consequently,” “as a result”)
• addition links (e.g., “in addition,” “moreover,” “furthermore,”
“similarly”)
• contrast links (e.g., “but,” “conversely,” “nevertheless,” “however,”
“although”)

5. CONCISENESS AND CLARITY
• Say only what needs to be said in your writing: The author who is more
concise—that is, more frugal with words—writes a more readable paper.
• Likewise, writing that is clear and precise is more accurate and transparent.
In combination, conciseness and clarity in your writing ensure that readers
understand your meaning.
• Where possible, tighten language to eliminate wordiness, redundancy,
evasiveness, overuse of the passive voice, circumlocution, and clumsy
prose
• Short words and short sentences are easier to comprehend than long
ones

6. • Concise writing must also be clear. Be deliberate in your word choices,
making certain that every word means exactly what you intend. For
example, in informal style, “feel” broadly substitutes for “think” or
“believe,” but in academic style, such latitude in word choice is not
acceptable. Likewise, using a word with multiple meanings can cause
confusion. For example, some writers use the word “significant” to mean
“important,” whereas others use “significant” only in the context of
statistical significance testing; ensure that your intended meaning is clear.
Choose words and phrases carefully, and specify the intended meaning if
there is potential for ambiguity.

7. WORDINESS AND REDUNDANCY
• Wordiness can impede readers’ understanding by forcing them to sort through
unnecessary words to decipher your ideas. Unconstrained wordiness lapses into
embellishment and flowery writing, which are inappropriate in academic style.
Consider the following examples of wordy and concise language:
Wordy Precise
At the present time Now
For the purpose of For, to
here were several students who completed several students completed

8. CONT….
They were both alike one and the same
In sum total In close proximity to
Four different groups Completely unanimous
were exactly the same as positioned very close
absolutely essential period of time
has been previously found summarize briefly
small in size the reason is because

9. SENTENCE AND PARAGRAPH LENGTH
There is no minimum or maximum sentence length in APA Style. Overuse of short,
simple sentences produces choppy prose, however, and overuse of long, involved
sentences results in difficult, sometimes incomprehensible, language. Varied
sentence length helps readers maintain interest and comprehension. When involved
concepts require long sentences, the components should proceed logically. Avoid
including multiple ideas in a single sentence; instead, break the sentence into
shorter ones. Direct, declarative sentences with simple, common words are usually
best.

10. TONE
Thus, when describing your research, present the ideas and findings in a direct,
straightforward manner, while also aiming for an interesting and compelling style—
for example, by fully elaborating on an idea or concept making word choices that
reflect your involvement with the problem

11. TITLES OF WORKS AND HEADINGS WITHIN WORKS
APA Style uses two types of capitalization for titles of works and headings within
works: title case and sentence case. In title case, major words are capitalized. In
sentence case, most words are lowercased. Nouns, verbs (including linking verbs),
adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and all words of four letters or more are considered
major words. Short (i.e., three letters or fewer) conjunctions, short prepositions, and
all articles are considered minor words.

12. TITLE CASE
• In title case, capitalize the following words in a title or heading:
• the first word, even a minor word such as “The”
• the first word of a subtitle, even if it is a minor word
• the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading, even if it is
a minor word
• major words, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., “Self-
Report,” not “Self-report”)
• words of four letters or more (e.g., “With,” “Between,” “From”

13. CONTI…
• Lowercase only minor words that are three letters or fewer in a title or heading
(except the first word in a title or subtitle or the first word after a colon, em dash,
or end punctuation in a heading):
• short conjunctions (e.g., “and,” “as,” “but,” “for,” “if,” “nor,” “or,” “so,” “yet”)
• articles (“a,” “an,” “the”)
• short prepositions (e.g., “as,” “at,” “by,” “for,” “in,” “of,” “off,” “on,” “per,” “to,” “up,”
“via”)

14. WHEN TO USE TITLE CASE
• Use title case for the following: titles of articles, books, reports, and other works
appearing in text In the book Bilingualism Across the Lifespan: Factors
Moderating Language Proficiency In the article “Media Influences on Self-Stigma
of Seeking Psychological Services: The Importance of Media Portrayals and
Person Perception”

15. SENTENCE CASE
• In sentence case, lowercase most words in the title or heading. Capitalize only
the following words:
• the first word of the title or heading
• the first word of a subtitle
• the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading nouns
followed by numerals or letters proper nouns

16. NUMBERS

17. NUMBERS EXPRESSED IN WORDS

18. TABLES & FIGURES

19. TABLE COMPONENTS
The basic components of a prototypical table are shown in Table 7.1 and are
summarized as follows.
• number: The table number (e.g., Table 1) appears above the table in bold font
• title: The table title appears one double-spaced line below the table number in
italic title case
• headings: Tables may include a variety of headings depending on the nature and
arrangement of the data. All tables should include column headings, including a
stub heading (heading for the leftmost column) Some tables also include column
spanners, decked heads, and table spanners

20. CONT…
• body: The table body includes all the rows and columns of a table. A cell is the
point of intersection between a row and a column. The body may be single-
spaced, one-and-a-half-spaced, or double-spaced.
• notes: Three types of notes (general, specific, and probability) appear below the
table as needed to describe contents of the table that cannot be understood from
the table title or body alone (e.g., definitions of abbreviations, copyright
attribution). Not all tables include table notes

23. IN-TEXT CITATIONS

24. PARENTHETICAL AND NARRATIVE CITATIONS
• Parenthetical Citation. Both the author and the date, separated by a comma,
appear in parentheses for a parenthetical citation.
• A parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence. When a
parenthetical citation is at the end of a sentence, put the period or other end
punctuation after the closing parenthesis.
• Falsely balanced news coverage can distort the public’s perception of expert
consensus on an issue (Koehler, 2016).

25. • If other text appears with the parenthetical citation, use commas around the year.
(see Koehler, 2016, for more detail)
• When text and a citation appear together in parentheses, use a semicolon to
separate the citation from the text; do not use parentheses within parentheses.
(e.g., falsely balanced news coverage; Koehler, 2016)

26. • Narrative Citation. The author appears in running text and the date appears in
parentheses immediately after the author name for a narrative citation.
• Koehler (2016) noted the dangers of falsely balanced news coverage. In rare
cases, the author and date might both appear in the narrative. In this case, do not
use parentheses.
• In 2016, Koehler noted the dangers of falsely balanced news coverage.

27. CITING MULTIPLE WORKS
• When citing multiple works parenthetically, place the citations in alphabetical
order, separating them with semicolons. Listing both parenthetical in-text
citations and reference list entries in alphabetical order helps readers locate and
retrieve works because they are listed in the same order in both places.
• (Adams et al., 2019; Shumway & Shulman, 2015; Westinghouse, 2017)

28. • Arrange two or more works by the same authors by year of publication. Place
citations with no date first, followed by works with dates in chronological order;
in-press citations appear last. Give the authors’ surnames once; for each
subsequent work, give only the date. (Department of Veterans Affairs, n.d., 2017a,
2017b, 2019) Zhou (n.d., 2000, 2016, in press)
• In the case of multiple works in which some author names have been abbreviated
to “et al.” (see Section 8.17), place the citations in chronological order (regardless
of the order in which they appear in the reference list). (Carraway et al., 2013,
2014, 2019)

29. • To highlight the work(s) most directly relevant to your point in a given sentence,
place those citations first within parentheses in alphabetical order and then insert
a semicolon and a phrase, such as “see also,” before the first of the remaining
citations, which should also be in alphabetical order. This strategy allows authors
to emphasize, for example, the most recent or most important research on a
topic, which would not be reflected by alphabetical order alone.
(Sampson & Hughes, 2020; see also Augustine, 2017; Melara et al., 2018;
Pérez, 2014)

30. NUMBER OF AUTHORS TO INCLUDE IN IN-TEXT
CITATIONS
• For a work with one or two authors, include the author name(s) in every citation.
• For a work with three or more authors, include the name of only the first author
plus “et al.” in every citation, including the first citation, unless doing so would
create ambiguity

32. WORKS WITH THE SAME AUTHOR AND SAME DATE
• When multiple references have an identical author (or authors) and publication
year, include a lowercase letter after the year (see Section 9.47). The year–letter
combination is used in both the in-text citation and the reference list entry. Use
only the year with a letter in the in-text citation, even if the reference list entry
contains a more specific date.
• (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012a)
• Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller (2012b)
• (Sifuentes, n.d.-a, n.d.-b)

33. SHORT QUOTATIONS (FEWER THAN 40 WORDS)
• If a quotation consists of fewer than 40 words, treat it as a short quotation:
Incorporate it into the text and enclose it within double quotation marks. For a
direct quotation, always include a full citation (parenthetical or narrative) in the
same sentence as the quotation.

34. BLOCK QUOTATIONS (40 WORDS OR MORE)
• If a quotation contains 40 words or more, treat it as a block quotation. Do not use
quotation marks to enclose a block quotation. Start a block quotation on a new
line and indent the whole block 0.5 in. from the left margin. If there are additional
paragraphs within the quotation, indent the first line of each subsequent
paragraph an additional 0.5 in. Double-space the entire block quotation; do not
add extra space before or after it. Either (a) cite the source in parentheses after
the quotation’s final punctuation or (b) cite the author an year in the narrative
before the quotation and place only the page number in parentheses after the
quotation’s final punctuation. Do not add a period after the closing parenthesis in
either case.

36. LEVEL OF HEADING
Level Format
1
Centered, Bold, Title Case Heading
Text begins as a new paragraph.
2
Flush Left, Bold, Title Case Heading
Text begins as a new paragraph.
3
Flush Left, Bold Italic, Title Case Heading
Text begins as a new paragraph.
4 Indented, Bold, Title Case Heading, Ending With a Period. Text begins on the same line and continues as a regular paragraph.
5
Indented, Bold Italic, Title Case Heading, Ending With a Period. Text begins on the same line and continues as a regular
paragraph.

37. CITING ONLINE MEDIA

38. WEB PAGES & WEBSITES

39. LEGAL REFERENCES

40. REFERENCE LIST