APA Style originated in 1929 when psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers established a set of style rules to codify the many components of scientific writing and increase reading comprehension. APA Style consists of guidelines for elements such as headings, tone, punctuation, statistics, tables/figures, citations, and other manuscript components to ensure clear and consistent presentation. It acknowledges the work of others through in-text citations and reference lists whether directly quoting or paraphrasing, and provides reliable paths for readers to find cited sources.

1. APA Style® originated in 1929, when a group of psychologists,
anthropologists, and business managers convened and sought to
establish a simple set of procedures, or style rules, that would
codify the many components of scientific writing to increase the
ease of reading comprehension.
As with other editorial styles, APA Style consists of rules or
guidelines that a publisher observes to ensure clear and
consistent presentation of written material. Itconcernsuniform
use of suchelements as
selection of headings, tone, and length;
punctuation and abbreviations;
presentation of numbers and statistics;
construction of tables and figures,
citation of references; and
many other elements that are a part of a manuscript.
Acknowledge the Work of Others
If someone else’s ideas, theories, or research have directly
influenced your work, you need to credit the source in text and in
the reference list. This applies whether you are directly quoting or
paraphrasing the work in question. If you are building on work
that you yourself have previously published, you need to cite that
as well. This enables your readers to follow the idea back to its
source.
Provide a Reliable Path to the Source
Part of the purpose of a reference is to lead your reader back to
the sources you used. For a book or journal article, this path is
pretty straightforward, but for some sources we need to dig
deeper. Ask yourself, “Howwouldsomeoneelsegethere?”