The citation and formatting style of American Psychological Association, commonly known as APA, is mostly used for essays associated with social and behavioral sciences. They include history, law, communicational and cultural studies, rhetoric, sociology etc. That is why the principles of APA style are obligatory for mastering by the students studying social-oriented subjects. It is most commonly used for scientific writing: for term and research papers, case studies and literature reviews as well as for essays. The APA “code of rules” contains guidelines for the essay structuring, referencing and typing. Let us try to go into the APA maze and find out all the details.
The main aim of APA format usage is to standardize the citations and references used in the paper. The format defines the correct way of including the end and footnotes into the body of the text as well as the reference page and in-text citation (the one consisting of a signal phrase, followed by the author’s name). APA style gives preference to author – date citation system. This means that you need to refer to the References within the paper by mentioning the name of the author for that source plus the page number in the corresponding book. (more…)