How do you do APA formating?

Answer 1

Depends on the subject, matter and so on.... click below.

Answer 2

Here's an example of a paper in APA format to get you going:

http://www.dianahacker.com/pdfs/Hacker-Shaw-APA.pdf#search=%22APA%20paper%2BApes%22

Here's another helpful website.

http://www.citationmachine.net

Go to the left and click on APA. Then find what kind of material you are trying to cite (like a book with one author, an Internet site, etc). Then click on that, and you'll be able to put all of your reference information into some blanks and it will generate in-text citations and citations for the bibliography for you. All you have to do is copy-paste the information into the bibliography or paper and then fix up the font.

And here's a link for general information.

http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citapa.htm

Answer 3

I think there is a guide you can get at the bookstore.

Answer 4

The main principle of APA (American psychological association formatting) is:

ONLY QUOTE WHAT YOU'VE ACTUALLY READ IN YOUR ESSAY AND REFERENCE SECTION (NB. A list of references is NOT called a Bibliography because a good essay should also include references to original research carried out by the original researchers which is published in journals)!

There are 3 types of references that you'll use in a good essay/report:

1. Textbooks
2. Journals
3.chapters
4. Websites

NB. A Chapter is a cross between a textbook and a journal. I.e. The researchers themselves write the 'part' of the textbook that you are referring to BUT the actual textbook itself is put together/edited by a person/group of people.

So, how do you refer to these sources of information in your essay/report and reference section?

In your essay:

1. For textbooks, you would write the surname of the researcher(s) and date of the research in the surname of the author of the textbook that you read about the research in followed by the date in brackets.

E.g. Atkinson & Schiffrin (1972; Cardwell, Clark & Meldrum, 2005)

NB. If you're referring to more than one researcher or author, the first time that you refer to them, you MUST mention the surnames of ALL of them. After that, you just write the surname of the first/main researcher/author followed by the words et al (which means and others). By the way the semicolon (;) is a short way of saying 'in' when used as part of a reference.

E.g. Atkinson & Schiffrin (1972; in Cardwell et al, 2005)

2. For journals (the easiest), you just write the surname(s) of the researcher(s) and write the date in brackets.

E.g. Atkinson & Schiffrin (1972)

NB. As before, if you're referring to more than one researcher, you mention all of the surnames the first time and then just one, followed by et al after that.

E.g. Atkinson et al (1972)

3. For chapters (similar to textbooks), you would write the name of the researcher followed by the date in brackets, the title of the 'chapter'. In the surname(s) of the editor(s) (shortened to eds.). Followed by the title of the book.

E.g. Atkinson & Schiffrin (1972. "Models of memory" In Day, A. Banks, M. & Poppins, T. (eds)., Cognitive psychology: A Reader.

4. For websites, you can do 2 things:

Either, Find out who wrote the article on the website and use the same format as for journal articles.

E.g. Hoon (2006)

Or, write the name of the website and the date in brackets, if you really cannot find the author of the article you read on the website.

E.g. Times Educational website (2006)

NB. Although you use the same reference format for websites as you do for journals in your essay/report, you use a DIFFERENT format for them in your reference section, as you will see.

In your reference section (NB called references NOT biblography and including everything you've read in one section on a separate page from the rest of your essay/report in ALPAHBETICAL order):

For textbooks:

You would write the surname(s) of the authors, followed by their intials, the date, title, edition number (in brackets and shortened to Ed.), country and place of publication and the name of the publisher.

E.g. Cardwell, M., Clark, A. & Meldrum, C. (2005). Psychology for A level (3rd ed.). London: UK. Harper Collins Publishers Ltd.

NB. Even if you've referred to lots of researchers listed in this textbook in your essay/report, you DON'T list them all in your references because you've already made it clear in your essay/report that you read them all in the SAME TEXTBOOK.

For journals:

You would write the surname(s) and initials of the researcher, followed by the date, title of the article, title of the journal (which you should either underline/write in italics-I can't do that here, so I'll write underlined/written in italics instead), the volume number (or issue number, if you imagine a journal as being like a monthly magazine, such as Cosmopolitan), the chapter number and the pages of the article.

E.g. Atkinson, A. & Schiffrin, A. (1972). The Multistore Model of Memory. Cognitive psychology (underlined/written in italics). 15 (5 ) pp.142-60.

For chapters, you would use the same format as you did in your essay/report but also add the place & country of publication.

E.g. Bjork, R.A. (1989) Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in human memory. In Roedigger III, H.L. & Craik, F.I.M (Eds.), Varieties of memory & consciousness (pp. 309-330). Hillsdale, NJ: USA: Erlbaum.

For websites: Surname(s) of author of the article read on website, date, title of article (underlined/written in italics), medium (i.e. that you read the article on the internet). Available from