A Pocket Style Manual, APA Version

Diana Hacker personally class-tested her handbooks with nearly four thousand students over thirty-five years at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland, where she was a member of the English faculty. Hacker handbooks, built on innovation and on a keen understanding of the challenges facing student writers, are the most widely adopted in America. Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, include The Bedford Handbook, Ninth Edition (2014); A Writer’s Reference, Eighth Edition (2015); Rules for Writers, Seventh Edition (2012); and A Pocket Style Manual, Seventh Edition (2015). Nancy Sommers, who has taught composition and directed composition programs for thirty years, now teaches writing and mentors new writing teachers at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.  She led Harvard’s Expository Writing Program for twenty years, directing the first-year writing program and establishing Harvard’s WAC program. A two-time Braddock Award winner, Sommers is well known for her research and publications on student writing. Her articles "Revision Strategies of Student and Experienced Writers" and "Responding to Student Writing" are two of the most widely read and anthologized articles in the field of composition.  Her recent work involves a longitudinal study of college writing to understand the role writing plays in undergraduate education. Sommers is the lead author on Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, and is coauthor of Fields of Reading, Ninth Edition (2010).

 

Writing Papers in APA Style

1 Writing college papers in APA style
a Research paper: Literature review
b Research paper: Original empirical research
c Laboratory report
d Analytical essay
e Annotated bibliography
f Administrative report
g Case study
h Clinical paper
i Professional memo
j Reflective essay

2 Understanding APA conventions
a Privileging current sources
b Using appropriate tone and language
c Avoiding stereotypes, bias, and offensive language
d Understanding intellectual property
e Collecting and reporting data
f Protecting research participants

3 Posing questions to start a paper
a Choosing a narrow question
b Choosing a challenging question
c Choosing a grounded question

4 Finding appropriate sources
a Locating reference works
b Locating articles
c Locating books
d Locating other sources online

5 Evaluating sources
a Selecting sources
b Reading with an open mind and a critical eye
c Assessing Web sources with special care

6 Managing information; avoiding plagiarism
a Maintaining a working bibliography
b Keeping track of source materials
c Avoiding unintentional plagiarism as you take notes

7 Supporting a thesis
a Forming a thesis
b Testing your thesis
c Organizing your ideas
d Using sources to inform and support your argument

8 Avoiding plagiarism
a Citing quotations and borrowed ideas
b Enclosing borrowed language in quotation marks
c Putting summaries and paraphrases in your own words
d Avoiding self-plagiarism

9 Integrating sources
a Using quotations appropriately
b Using signal phrases to integrate sources
c Synthesizing sources

Formatting Papers in APA Style

10 Parts of a paper in APA style
a Title page
b Abstract
c Introduction
d Method
e Results
f Discussion
g References
h Footnotes
i Headings
j Appendices
k Visuals

11 APA paper format
a Formatting the paper
b Preparing the list of references

12 Sample pages from papers in APA style
a Research paper: Literature review (psychology)
b Research paper: Empirical research (psychology)
c Research paper: Qualitative methodology (sociology)
d Analytical essay (sociology)
e Annotated bibliography (economics)
f Laboratory report (psychology)
g Administrative report (criminology/criminal justice)
h Clinical practice paper (nursing)
i Reflective essay (education)
j Business report
k Professional memo (business)

Documenting Sources in APA Style

13 APA in-text citations

14 APA list of references
a General guidelines for listing authors (print and online)
b Articles and other short works
c Books and other long works
d Web sites and parts of Web sites
e Audio, visual, and multimedia sources
f Personal communication and social media

15 APA notes
a Footnotes in the text
b Footnotes in tables and figures

Clarity

16 Wordy sentences.
a Redundancies
b Empty or inflated phrases
c Needlessly complex structures

17 Active verbs
a When to replace be verbs
b When to replace passive verbs

18 Parallelism
a Items in a series
b Paired ideas

19 Needed words
a Words in compound structures
b The word that
c Words in comparisons

20 Shifts
a Shifts in point of view
b Shifts in tense

21 Mixed constructions
a Mixed grammar
b Illogical connections
c Is when, is where, and reason . . . is because constructions

22 Misplaced and dangling modifiers
a Misplaced words
b Misplaced phrases and clauses
c Dangling modifiers
d Split infinitives

23 Sentence variety
a Combining choppy sentences
b Varying sentence openings

24 Appropriate voice
a Jargon
b Clichés
c Slang
d Sexist language

Grammar

25 Subject-verb agreement
a Words between subject and verb
b Subjects joined with and
c Subjects joined with or or nor
d Indefinite pronouns such as someone
e Collective nouns such as jury
f Subject after verb
g Who, which, and that
h Plural form, singular meaning
i Titles, company names, and words mentioned as words

26 Other problems with verbs
a Irregular verbs
b Tense
c Mood

27 Pronouns (agreement, reference, case)
a Pronoun-antecedent agreement
b Pronoun reference
c Case of personal pronouns (I vs. me etc.)
d Who or whom

28 Adjectives and adverbs
a Adjectives
b Adverbs
c Comparatives and superlatives

29 Sentence fragments
a Fragmented clauses
b Fragmented phrases
c Acceptable fragments

30 Run-on sentences
a Revision with a comma and a coordinating conjunction
b Revision with a semicolon (or a colon or a dash)
c Revision by separating sentences
d Revision by restructuring the sentence

31 Grammar for multilingual writers
a Verbs
b Articles (a, an, the)
c Sentence structure
d Prepositions showing time and place

Punctuation

32 The comma
a Before a coordinating conjunction joining independent clauses
b After an introductory word group
c Between items in a series
d Between coordinate adjectives
e To set off a nonrestrictive element, but not a restrictive element
f To set off transitional and parenthetical expressions, absolute phrases, and contrasted elements
g To set off nouns of direct address, the words yes and no, interrogative tags, and mild interjections
h To set off direct quotations introduced with expressions such as he argued
i With dates, addresses, and titles
j Misuses of the comma

33 The semicolon and the colon
a The semicolon
b The colon

34 The apostrophe
a To indicate possession
b To mark contractions
c Conventional uses
d Misuses of the apostrophe

35 Quotation marks
a To enclose direct quotations
b Around titles of short works
c Other punctuation with quotation marks
d Misuses of quotation marks

36 Other marks
a The period
b The question mark
c The exclamation point
d The dash
e Parentheses
f Brackets
g The ellipsis mark
h The slash

Mechanics

37 Capitalization
a Proper vs. common nouns
b Titles with proper names
c Titles of works
d Special terms
e First word of a sentence or quoted sentence
f First word following a colon
g Abbreviations

38 Abbreviations
a Before and after a name
b Organizations, companies, countries
c Units of measurement and time
d Latin abbreviations
e Plural of abbreviations
f Other uses of abbreviations
g Inappropriate abbreviations

39 Numbers
a Using numerals
b Using words for numbers

40 Italics
a Titles of works
b Words as words and other uses
c Ships, aircraft, spacecraft
d Foreign words

41 Spelling
a  Major spelling rules
b Spelling variations

42 Hyphenation
a Compound words
b Words functioning together as an adjective
c Suffixes and prefixes
d Hyphenation at ends of lines

Appendices

Glossary of usage
Glossary of grammatical terms
Visiting the writing center
Checklist for global revision

Index
Documentation directories
List of sample pages from student papers
Revision symbols