Introduction
Coursework and research papers entail research that relies on other authors’ work. In addition, academic research requires upholding academic integrity by avoiding plagiarism and crediting all sources whose ideas and content have been used. In that view, understanding various citation, referencing and formatting styles is crucial as it helps address all those issues. In that consideration, this summary provides an overview of how the style will be useful and used in the future courses.
Discussion
The APA styles will provide with a standard format of giving credit to other authors for their contribution in future research. It is also referred to as the parenthetical documentation style as it entails citations to the source within the text and will be primarily applied in social sciences. (American Psychological Association, 2010) Thus, it will be useful in allowing the reader to identify easily where the information was sourced from. In addition, the style will save me the trouble of having to make foot and endnotes. (Burton, 2010)
The style will provide guidelines on formatting of the documents with the main aspects being the headings and the reference list formatting. The style requires the use of three information; authors name, publication date and page numbers for purposes of in-text citations. (Purdue OWL, 2014) Finally, the key to using the style in the right manner will be identifying the type of source being cited and referenced as the formatting depends on the kind of source. (Wisconsin, 2014)
Conclusion
In view of the style’s purpose and given that future courses will entail writing research and term papers that rely on other source’s content and information, APA will be of great use. That is because it will help in formatting of the papers headings, paper size and margins, in-text citations and reference list.
References
American Psychological Association. (2010). Mastering APA style: Student's workbook and
Training Guide. 6th Ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Burton, L. (2010). An interactive approach to essays and research reports writing in
Psychology. 3rd Ed. New Jersey: Wiley.
Purdue OWL. (2014). APA Style. Retrieved from,
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Wisconsin. (2014). The Writer’s Handbook: APA Documentation Guide. Retrieved from,
http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocAPAOrientation.html
