Question 1
The APA – American Psychological Association – is an academic formatting style that helps students and researchers to format the structure of their work in a bid to avoid plagiarism. Developed in 1929 by a group of psychologists anthropologists and business managers, the style sets out simple procedures and rules that codify the scientific writing elements (APA, 2016). The simplified writing elements outlined by APA make it easy for users of scientific information to understand and comprehend the concepts being presented by the writers. The APA guidelines also promote consistency, in addition to clarity, when writing and presenting scientific information.
Some of the elements that the APA style focuses on standardizing include headings, tone and length, punctuations and use of abbreviations, presentation of numbers and statistics, and tables and figures in research work, citation and referencing formats (APA, 2016). When carrying out scientific research, the researcher reviews information that is written by other authors. Integrating such information into the researcher’s work demands that the researcher gives credit to the original writers. Giving credit to the original writers can be achieved through in-text citation, as well as by providing a reference list for the sources used by a researcher. Citing the original source is important, even when the researcher has paraphrased the information, as it eliminates the issue of plagiarism.
There are times when some information cannot be paraphrased, requiring a researcher to directly quote the source. The APA style provides guidelines for quotation and citation of sources used by the researchers, making the research easily readable, clear and easy to comprehend, not only for the researchers, but also for the users of the information. APA style is used to document writing ideas because it encourages the disclosure of pertinent information without unnecessary distractions (APA, 2016). Additionally, APA style gives researchers guidelines on the necessary protocol when reporting critical details that are not the researchers’ original ideas.
The purpose of in-text citation is to give credit to the original source after paraphrasing information from such a source. APA in-text citation further helps the readers of documents to identify sources used by the researcher, in addition to helping the writers integrate the paraphrased information into the document. The Hub (2016) posits that citations and references helps the writer to acknowledge any external elements that a writer may include in his/her document, eliminating plagiarism.
Question 2
Researchers may sometimes be required to present information as it appears from the original author. This is referred to as quotations, which are presented differently from in-text citations for paraphrased information. From the video, it is evident that when information from a source is used directly without paraphrasing, an in-text citation is not sufficient. APA format demands that the researcher must use quotation marks around three or more words picked from the source. This means that if the researcher has consecutively used three words or more from another source to present an idea, these words should be surrounded by quotation marks – “”.
In addition to using the quotation marks, an in-text citation must also be included, after the quotation marks. The appearance of the in-text citation depends on whether the writer introduced the author of the source at the beginning of the paragraph, in which case, the in text citation includes the year of publication in brackets. Otherwise, the in text citation should follow the normal format of author and year of publication in brackets at the end of the quoted paragraph or sentences. Unlike when the information is paraphrased and the in text citation only has the author’s name and the year of publication, quotations must also include the page number from which the quotation was lifted. The page number is also put into brackets as shown in the following demonstration:
Nancy and Shrinika (2012) posit that “Learning APA is a matter both of overcoming conceptual blocks and personal style preferences” (p. 27).
APA style, therefore, is an essential tool for students and scientific researchers. This paper sought to establish the importance of APA style in documenting writing ideas. APA helps in averting plagiarism, which is characterized by the use of other peoples’ ideas without due credit to these people. In addition to helping writers prevent plagiarism, the APA style also facilitates the organization of a writer’s ideas into a logical and comprehensible document. The organization makes it easy for the readers of the documents to use the information. This exercise was important in forming a deeper understanding about the use of APA style in scientific research.
References
American Psychological Association, APA. (2016). Frequently asked questions: Why is APA
Nancy, V. C. & Shrinika, W. (2012). APA, Meet Google: Graduate students' approaches to
learning citation style. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 12(2), 27
38
The Hub. (2016). APA guide. Retrieved from https://hub2.devry.edu/node/272
