The Publication Manual
of the American Psychological Association ("APA manual")
provides many general guidelines for editorial style, including areas such as
capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. In addition, there some rules that
only apply in very specific situations. The following are examples of some of
these one-of-a-kind rules:
·
The general rule is to leave one space after
every punctuation mark, but you should leave no space after internal periods in
abbreviations (e.g., U.S.
or n.d.)See page 291.
·
The general rule is to capitalize proper nouns,
personal names, names of specific departments within a university, complete
names of specific academic courses, and the trade and brand names of products,
but you should not capitalize the names of laws, theories, models, and
hypotheses. See p. 97.
·
The general rule is to capitalize both words of
a capitalized word that is a hyphenated compound in the title of a book or
article within the body of a document, but you should not capitalize the second
word of a capitalized hyphenated compound in the title of a book or article in
a reference list entry. See page 95.
·
The general rule is to end each reference list
entry with a period, but you should not use a period at the end of an entry if
the last element is a URL. See page 272.
·
The general rule is to use a hyphen in all
compounds involving the prefix self,
but you should not use a hyphen in the compound self psychology. See page 93.
·
The general rule is to use a period after a page-number
citation for quoted material, but you should place the period before the
page-number citation if the quoted material appears in a block format. See page
118.
·
The general rule is to list people’s
initials following their last names in a reference list entry, but initials
should precede last names of editors in an entry that includes both author and
editor names. See page 252.
·
The rule is to place table titles and numbers
above the tables, but you should place figure captions and numbers below the figures.
See page 199.
·
The rule for breaking a URL between two lines in
a reference list entry is to divide the URL after a slash, or before a period,
but never by inserting a hyphen. See page 273.
·
The rule is to capitalize an academic grade
level when using it as a noun (e.g., Grade 10), but not when using it as an
adjective (e.g., 10th-grade student). See page 125.
About the Author
Carol Levine, has
B.A. and M.A. degrees in
English Language and
Literature from the
University of Michigan
and more than 25 years
of experience as a
writer, editor, English
instructor, writing
coach, and APA format
expert. As the Writing
Specialist for the
University of Phoenix
for 17 years, she worked
extensively with
students in the Master
of Counseling, Master of
Education, and MBA
programs. Carol also
developed and conducted
numerous workshops on
the use of APA format
for University of
Phoenix students and
faculty members (e.g.,
The ABCs of APA; APA
Formatting: From Soup to
Nuts; APA: Changes in
the Fifth
Edition Manual) and
earned the unofficial
title of "APA Queen."
Carol is not only an
APA format expert. She
is also a meticulous
proofreader who takes
pride in spotting errors
that are overlooked by
spell check programs, as
well as a skilled editor
with a vocabulary that
enables her to complete
the Sunday New York
Times crossword puzzle.
She is highly efficient,
never misses a deadline,
and is comfortable doing
either paper or
electronic editing.
"Carol was
exceptionally diligent
in her work. She was
in constant contact
with me over the time
she was working on my
paper and finished the
work several days
ahead of schedule. She
paid great attention
to detail, catching a
couple redundancies I
had missed, as well as
some inconsistencies,
which were beyond the
scope of the APA
compliance I was
looking for." Doctoral
candidate at Nova
Southeastern
University. Contact
information on request
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