Overview of APA Style

Just as each discipline has its own goals and outcomes for research and its own lexicon of vocabulary, each major field of study also has a particular way of documenting sources and formatting written work in general. The documentation style most common in the social sciences is put forth by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, more commonly called APA style. Documentation styles:

• call attention to the information valued by each field
• provide a consistent mechanism for honoring the work of others (for continuing the "conversation" of the discipline)
• establish the professional standard for the field
• help you avoid academic dishonesty (namely plagiarism) by giving you a tool with which you can acknowledge when other people's ideas have influenced your own, when you have directly quoted an author, and when you have just re-worded another person's ideas (paraphrasing and summarizing)

To test your current understanding and familiarity with APA style, complete the APA Style Editing Self-Check and the APA Style Practice Test.