The American Psychological Association, or APA style, is the standard used in social sciences. Over time, this form of formatting has been adapted by other academic disciplines for its simplicity and professionalism. Know more: https://polishedpaper.com/apa-essay-editing

1. Capitalization in APA
Style
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2. • In APA style, you
will most likely
need to describe a
number of tests,
measures, and
theories, among
other things. Your
first impulse might
be to capitalize
everything because
you will use specific
names, but
capitalization is not

3. • In APA style, you will most
likely need to describe a
number of tests, measures,
and theories, among other
things. Your first impulse
might be to capitalize
everything because you will
use specific names, but
capitalization is not always
acceptable. Here’s a brief
guide to capitalization in APA.
TheoriesTheories

4. • Capitalize only exact, complete
titles of tests. Do NOT capitalize
shortened or inexact forms, for
example, the Minnesota Multi
phasic Personality Inventory vs. the
Minnesota inventory and the
Stroop Color-Word Interference
Test vs. the Stroop color test
• Note: You should always capitalize
place and people names (when
they appear in names of theories,
tests, or anything else).
TestsTests

5. • Many tests in the social
sciences contain subsections
called scales. Do not capitalize
the words “test” or “scale” if
they refer to subsections of
tests but do capitalize the
actual name of the scale, for
example, the MMPI
Aggressiveness scale and the
MVPI Aversions scale.
ScalesScales

6. • For an experiment, you will
• likely need to discuss different groups of
participants. One group will be the
control, for which you do not apply
“treatment.” Then you'll have one or more
groups that do receive “treatment.” You
may refer to these treatments as
“conditions.” So when do you capitalize
group and/or condition names?
• In general, almost never.
• ex: the experimental and control groups
• ex: the lecture condition group and the
• self-learning condition group
ConditionsConditions

7. • Capitalize factors, components,
trials, and items when they
precede a number or letter (not a
variable) but not otherwise, for
example, Factors 1 and 2 vs. Big
Five personality factors and Trial 2
vs. trial n (where n is a variable
indicating how many trials there
are).
Factors, Components, Trials, and ItemsFactors, Components, Trials, and Items
Medicines
Only capitalize brand names, not
generics. For example, you do not
capitalize sertraline (the generic
name), but you do capitalize Zoloft
(the brand name for that generic).

8. • In names of health conditions, only
capitalize people words, for
example, Crohn’s disease and
diabetes.
Health ConditionsHealth Conditions
Courses and Departments
Capitalize the names of specific
departments within specific
universities or companies not uses
that are more general, for example,
Cornell University’s Department of
Linguistics vs. a department of
linguistics.
Capitalize the names of specific

9. • In the text (the body of a paper),
capitalize the first word, the first
word after a colon, and all major
words (not “a,” “an,” “the,” or
prepositions or conjunctions of 3
or fewer letters).
• ex. The Journey Toward
Reconciliation (“toward” is
capitalized even though it’s a
preposition because it has more
than three letters)
•
Titles of Books, Articles, and JournalsTitles of Books, Articles, and Journals

10. • Capitalize the name of the
section but not the word
“section,” for example, the
Method section.
• Do not capitalize other words
referring to other common
parts of books, papers, or
tables, for example, page 13
and row 7.
• There you have it, a brief
overview of capitalization in
Book/Paper SectionsBook/Paper Sections

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