The APA Guidelines
The APA citation style was introduced by the American Psychological Association and is currently one of the most popular formats used in academic writing. The format is used to indicate sources of data used in the study. There are several basic reasons to use the format.
Presentation
The style enables scholars to create papers that are uniform in their presentation. This way it becomes easier to follow the flow of ideas and select the major points of the research, avoiding unnecessary details. According to the latest edition of APA, papers must use a 12-point fond, be double-spaced, and have 1-inch margins. When the paper is formatted in such a way, it adds clarity to it.
Plagiarism
This is especially important for college students that are not well-aware of citation rules and often present third-party information as their own. According to the APA guidelines, any borrowed ideas must be cited either directly or indirectly. This gives credit to the author and ensures that no plagiarism appears in the paper.
Organization
The guidelines help organize the work in such a way that the reader will concentrate on its content and find what he/she is seeking. Paper formatted according to APA must include the following sections: title page, abstract, introduction, main body, conclusion, and reference list.
Writing skills
When a student is learning how to use APA, he/she is improving his/her writing skills as the format requires considering grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, and style. As a result, students develop a clear, accurate, and concise language, free of bias.
Another aspect that should be taken into consideration is in-text citations. They are used for avoiding plagiarism and showing what studies have been used as a support. Moreover, they add credibility to the research, proving that it is deeply grounded in evidence. The in-text citation for the paper I have analyzed runs as follows: (Nimmo‐Smith, Brugha, Kerr, McManus, & Rai, 2016).
Citation Examples
“People with epilepsy were sevenfold more likely to have reported experiencing discrimination due to health problems (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 7.1; 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.1-16.3)” (Nimmo‐Smith, Brugha, Kerr, McManus, & Rai, 2016) – for the first quote.
“People with epilepsy also had greater odds of experiencing domestic violence and sexual abuse than the general population” (Nimmo-Smith et al., 2016) – for all subsequent quotes.
References
Nimmo‐Smith, V., Brugha, T. S., Kerr, M. P., McManus, S., & Rai, D. (2016). Discrimination, domestic violence, abuse, and other adverse life events in people with epilepsy: Population‐based study to assess the burden of these events and their contribution to psychopathology. Epilepsia, 57(11), 1870-1878.