APA Format Lecture

Summary

Dr. Gregg Fields dives into the intricacies of using APA format for scholarly writing. He touches upon common pitfalls such as spacing issues and the importance of indenting correctly. Although APA allows flexibility with font choices, Dr. Fields prefers Times New Roman for its readability. Key structural elements like page numbers and the importance of a well-formatted references page are highlighted. The lecture encourages checking online resources for the latest APA guidelines and stresses understanding how technology interacts with formatting commands.

Highlights

• Spacing matters in APA format—avoid those extra gaps between paragraphs! ✂️
• Indenting isn't just hitting the spacebar—use the right tools to keep your document neat. 📜
• APA allows flexibility in font choice; keep it readable with Times New Roman or Arial. 🖋️
• When setting up your header, remember APA doesn't require your last name like MLA does. 📰
• Use page breaks to ensure consistent formatting across different applications. 🚀
• The references page is crucial—remember to double-space and use hanging indents. 📖
• For in-text citations, APA requires author-date format, different from MLA. 📅
• Make sections clear with correct use of headings and subheadings. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• APA format requires attention to details like spacing and indentation. Don't let those extra spaces sneak in! 📏
• You can choose different fonts in APA, but readability is key. Times New Roman and Arial are solid choices. 🖋️
• Page numbers go on the right side of the header in APA – and skip the last name unless it's MLA! 📄
• Always double-check your formatting using online APA guides, as standards can change with editions. 📚
• Understanding how technology reads formatting is crucial, especially when shifting between applications. 🤓

Overview

Dr. Gregg Fields begins the lecture by emphasizing the importance of APA formatting in academic writing. He navigates through common pitfalls, like inadvertent extra spaces between paragraphs and incorrect indentations. To ensure a seamless document presentation, Dr. Fields advises against using simple spacebars for indents, instead opting for built-in word processing tools. This meticulous attention to detail is what upholds the structural integrity of scholarly work.

Throughout the talk, Dr. Fields shares useful insights on font selection, mentioning that APA format offers more flexibility compared to MLA. He emphasizes the significance of choosing readable fonts such as Times New Roman or Arial, cautioning that one's font choice should enhance readability without compromising the document's professional appearance. Additionally, specifics on APA header setups and page numbering are covered, illustrating clear demarcations from MLA formatting.

In his conclusion, Dr. Fields outlines practical strategies for seamlessly integrating APA formatting in essays. This includes using page breaks to maintain consistent formatting and understanding the nuances of in-text citations which differ from MLA. He also underscores the importance of a well-organized references page, complete with hanging indents, and advises on the strategic use of headings and subheadings to structure the flow of writing. These insights are crucial for anyone striving to master APA formatting.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to APA Formatting The chapter introduces APA formatting, focusing on setting up a document in APA style. The speaker mentions personal opinions on view preferences in word processing software and highlights the key step of ensuring the document is double-spaced. There is a brief mention of differences between Mac and PC settings, suggesting slight variations in options. Overall, the chapter sets the stage for understanding basic document setup in APA format.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Document Formatting in Word The chapter titled 'Document Formatting in Word' discusses the importance of proper formatting in word processing software like Microsoft Word and Google Docs. It highlights the common issue of automatic extra space being added after paragraphs, particularly in Google Docs. The chapter emphasizes that this extra spacing is not acceptable in APA formatting, which is commonly used in academic writing. The discussion includes identifying and fixing such formatting issues to adhere to the proper guidelines.
• 03:00 - 06:00: APA vs MLA Formatting The chapter discusses the differences in formatting styles between APA and MLA. It notes that although one might not immediately understand all the reasons behind standard formats, it is essential to adhere to these established norms unless a compelling reason exists not to do so. There is an emphasis on the proper indentation of paragraphs, advising against manually spacing to achieve this effect.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Running Heads and Page Numbers In this chapter, the discussion centers around formatting requirements for APA style, particularly focusing on font choices. Unlike MLA which strictly uses Times New Roman 12 point font, APA offers flexibility allowing fonts like Arial and Times New Roman, generally ranging from 10 to 12 point sizes. This consideration plays a role in document presentation and readability under APA guidelines.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Title Page and In-Text Citations The chapter discusses preferences in font choices for different types of writing, emphasizing Times New Roman 12-point font for its readability and clear word spacing. It mentions that while serif fonts like Times New Roman are traditionally used for academic essays, sans-serif fonts are often preferred in web and technical writing due to their cleaner, simpler appearance.
• 12:00 - 15:00: References Page Formatting The chapter discusses formatting for the references page, focusing on page numbers and MLA-specific guidelines. It emphasizes inserting a page number on the right side of the header. The text advises against adding your last name to the header unless following MLA format, noting that MLA headers remain consistent throughout the document.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Handling Multiple Works by Same Author The chapter discusses how to handle multiple works by the same author in APA formatting. It covers the differences in formatting requirements between students and professionals, noting that students no longer need to include a running head on the first page. The chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding how to create a running head, which includes knowing how to format a different first page, noting that this skill remains valuable knowledge even if it's not always required.
• 18:00 - 23:00: Block Quotations and Figures This chapter discusses the challenges and technical details involved in setting up a document with block quotations and figures. It explores issues such as managing page numbers and maintaining a consistent running head throughout the document. The chapter also touches upon problems like unexpected font changes and the author's process in trying to recall the correct method for document formatting. The focus is on overcoming these common formatting difficulties to professionally present quotes and figures in written work.

APA Format Lecture Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 sticks on apa format uh one i don't like this view so small but what can you do and that matters less so what's the first thing with apa format somebody tell me so you wanna you can go in and you can do a quick hey let's make it double spaced and because word's default is to have a paragraph it's to have a push on the paragraphing you also and i'm working on a mac um but it might be slightly different options when it comes to pc but not so far off but um
• 00:30 - 01:00 inward and sometimes google docs it will automatically put in extra space after a paragraph if it's there you'll see like an eight here and i'll show you what that does so that you know not to let it do that so when there's extra space it may be hard to see that's not the right button i'm not in a web page um it may be harder to see but can you guys see the at extra gap here yeah so that is one of those like don't do it in apa it's not supposed to be done that way why people care there's a there are
• 01:00 - 01:30 reasons for all these things as we've said we may not know all of them in the moment but we do know that they're there and that lots and lots of scholars put together what mla format is over the years um and we basically since we're the often the newbies in these kind of conversations we we adhere to the social norms unless we have a really good reason not to so with that i would also make sure that all my paragraphs are actually indented um if you are indenting by going space space space that's not really wise don't
• 01:30 - 02:00 do it and that'll come up again in a minute so um there's that what else needs to happen with apa format what's a quick thing so you can choose multiple different fonts with apa mla is traditionally times new roman 12 point font done apa gives you a little more flexibility it says make it readable so you can use arial or you can use times new roman and it's usually 10 to 12 point font for apa um so yes if i had if i had a particular
• 02:00 - 02:30 thing personally i do like times new roman 12 point font just because i like the serif look it i still consider it fairly readable the spaces between words are accented a little are a little more obvious to me so i like that um however depending on so for academic essays it usually doesn't matter one way or the other but depending on your context if you're just if you're writing something for web publication or technical writing that usually is a sans-serif font which means it doesn't have the little swirlies um versus a serif font for things like books or essays or things more along
• 02:30 - 03:00 those lines have the swirls the serif the little hooks and things okay but formatting wise so i don't get distracted you do want to insert a page number so you can double tap double click into the header insert a page number and then tell it to put it on the the right side and that should be all we have to do um no that's mla don't put your last name unless you're doing mla so mla headers say it's the same all the way through
• 03:00 - 03:30 it's your last name and a space and page number for apa depending on whether you're a student or you're a professional a student has things they need they don't necessarily any they no longer have to worry about the running head on a first page um so keep that in mind you don't have to do that anymore if you see it it's the sixth edition i'll take it either way okay and it's still a good practice to know how to do or what's called a running head which is part of it is knowing how to make a different first page so if i
• 03:30 - 04:00 click different first page here i have to go and i have to redo the page number again and then if i what sometimes you'll do to get a running head is you have to and it's changing the font on me one thing to be aware of um i'm trying to remember how to do this that's not it it's been a while since i've done one of these but i believe it'd be something along those lines and then your title would be there
• 04:00 - 04:30 um the cool book chapter name and usually this is like the a 50 word reduction of your title or no more than sorry no more than 50 character reduction of your title that is how sixth edition roughly used to do it um you don't have to do that anymore but one thing since i'm here if you are focused on formatting make sure your header is formatted including the page number actually so ctrl a for all or and make sure that
• 04:30 - 05:00 it is formatted in the same font as the rest of your paper right so i'm going to get rid of this because i don't need it and i'm going to go back into my insert tab let's see if it'll actually the header footer tab i'm going to turn off different first page and it'll put it back but now that it's put it back i have to re-change the the font again real quick because i didn't do it for the other one so those are things to be aware of now the next thing for apa if you've already drafted some text like this all you have to do is hit um in
• 05:00 - 05:30 word hit control enter or if you're on a mac command enter that inserts a page break um to the next page and i'm going to add another space here because i'm going to come back and put a bolded title but on my title page here i need to center it and i can create some space with this just because my i want my name and everything to be centered in the page it's still double spaced so that's good um but it's
• 05:30 - 06:00 i'm just gonna put the basic thing so whatever my title is and then actually it didn't double space so i'm going to control a everything and make sure it's double spaced again and i'll check on that okay so now after that what comes next is it the writer's name your name so student's name and then what
• 06:00 - 06:30 okay and are you sure it's not mla we're positive i'm just making sure because the class is often more common in mla and then what is it the date or the institution what comes next professor's name goes under yours yes i'm seeing title bolded higher up and then the institution well let's we can always do it so
• 06:30 - 07:00 actually let's model what happens when we're confused or when we're not sure when we think we remember or seeing an example we can go ap apa al purdue sample paper and then we can pull up the apa 7 student sample paper clearly i've been to this link before right and as i told you guys it's not so much about memorizing all these because they change from time to time the seventh edition came out i think less than two years ago so yeah okay so we can do that we've got
• 07:00 - 07:30 name department class teacher and date so we can look at that now and go back i'm using control tab to go back so we've got the title and if we want to put it up i'm fine with that and then we said name what was was it name college first college no i'm using the funny characters you use for like
• 07:30 - 08:00 h or xml and stuff um is it college class professor date is that what it was cool if anybody doesn't know symbols like this or symbols like this are coder symbols for generic things so you would replace the whole unit including the brackets so instead of it being student's name it would be you know if i'm the student great fields right you wouldn't keep those so i'm just using that as a placeholder then let's see
• 08:00 - 08:30 once i have all that the title is bolded right that's the thing to remember whatever my title is i just hit the wrong button so whatever my title is i bold it and then that same title i caught i can copy and paste into the first page it should be at the top of the first page right on top of the text still centered so whatever that title was should carry through i indent my first content and then i keep going and as you can see i've got examples of
• 08:30 - 09:00 in-text citations here and this is from a published book chapter of mine so you're welcome free content um whether it's any good or not uh it's meaningful and that's all that matters but as we've noted before apa style citations have last name and year of publication and since in this first situation i was summarizing um some major uh scholarship quickly i did not quote word for word and it was kind of the
• 09:00 - 09:30 main overview of the scholarship um i just put there i didn't have to put a page number um and if you note there's a semicolon when i'm citing from two different people for the same concept uh we also can go down here where i do use a direct quote as part of this and um and in this case we have commas to separate the page numbers and the year of publication now this is different than an mla citation
• 09:30 - 10:00 because mla wouldn't have all of this so an mla would look like that cool um so what else do we need to do so we've got our paragraph is there an extra gap here or is it where it's supposed to be okay it's always good to i believe remove orphan and widow and all of a sudden i'm spacing on where that is but i'm pretty sure it's in the line spacing options and on a mac at least it's line page breaks
• 10:00 - 10:30 so i'm i'm gonna get rid of widow orphan control so that if it's at the bottom of the page it just stays there and it fills the whole text so if it's an academic essay this matters uh or you want the whole page to be filled you don't want it to suddenly create weird gaps at the end in some publication settings you want for the sake of your reader you want a line like this to end up starting a new page and so when your design when you're designing in a more fluid state you don't you usually don't want
• 10:30 - 11:00 the text broken up like this but in an academic essay we just want it to run okay um so then okay i wrote all my cool stuff this is not traditional header but i wrote all my cool stuff with apa there's a specific way if you're going to use headings and subheadings that you use things like bolds caps italics underlines there's a specific way you do it in mla and in apa they're different to set up different sections of a document so just be aware that it's
• 11:00 - 11:30 different and it is something you should look up if you have a document long enough to use headings and subheadings they are great ways to structure something you're writing don't do a heading or subheading for every paragraph but they're great ways to structure your writing if you've got larger chunks if once i get down to the end of the paper i'm going to i'm not going to do enter enter because that's how you get if you do this and i
• 11:30 - 12:00 entered down till i get to the next page i'm like okay it's right here i'm going to put my references page in but then oh wait i forgot i'm going to go i needed to add a little more text and so now my references to slit this is the same reason you use up here you don't go enter enter enter to get to here because if something changes or you realize you forgot to double space or something like that this first page is going to move but when we do the control enter command enter we insert a page break and that allows us to
• 12:00 - 12:30 always have this thing this next thing that's supposed to start on a new page start on a new page if you don't that becomes a problem when you're dealing with technologies as we've learned in this class technology is going from one to the other whether it's word or google docs to canvas or whatever they don't always read the same way so if in word you say enter enter enter enter word might read it as this is a 12 point font new line it's a word then communicates to something like
• 12:30 - 13:00 canvas and when you read it in canvas canvas just read this is a new line and canvas does new lines at 14 or 16 point font and then suddenly everything shifts and you're when you read it in canvas it doesn't look like it doesn't work that's just understanding technologies talk in a different language to fix that we tell it canvas if canvas reads insert page break it reads it the same and that content always starts on a new page does that make sense so kind of fun to think about the language computers and whatnot and because the references page is a major
• 13:00 - 13:30 section it gets centered in apa and it gets bolded and i'm going to pretend that i've got an actual citation well i guess i could use something like this i'm just going to borrow borrow this text to pretend it's the information for a citation to keep us moving um so i go on into the new thing it i no longer want this centered and i'm gonna pretend that this is my source um please look up this specifics on apa
• 13:30 - 14:00 format in this case it would actually be i can't remember this scholar's first name which is terrible because it's a really good source but yeah if this were some sort of book chapter or an article in a journal and then we'd have this coming next as like the actual journal title that'd be italicized and there'd be some other information
• 14:00 - 14:30 that would not be italicized um so every you want to go and check the citation styles don't generate them don't auto generate them or use something on some system on the computer either get them from the library databases that provide all the necessary information and then check it against the apa or mla websites but don't just kind of throw something in here um without checking and looking it up i look it up every time because as just as a final check it's
• 14:30 - 15:00 it's better than assuming a computer is going to take the information that you see and turn it out like it's supposed to and it's better than assuming you can get it into the computer input in a way that the computer recognizes so yeah but more importantly about the formatting is your references page is still double spaced with no extra spaces before or after so i'm going to pretend i have multiple citations i'm just going to use the same one whoops
• 15:00 - 15:30 so i'm just going to pretend these are each separate citations i can highlight this and the quick way is to go command or control t depending on your system that will automatically create what's called a hanging indent which pushes this second line over and any lines after it so if i have more text in that if that's a long citation with the url or something having done the control t method now it's automatically pushing this over you can also do this using the guidelines up here connected to your
• 15:30 - 16:00 paragraph lines and stuff is everybody clear on how that worked ctrl t or command t depending on what system you're using the hard way or actually i'll show you this the roundabout way because sometimes i don't know that that one works in google docs so i'll show you just in case alternatively you can go you can right click and go paragraph under paragraph indents and spacing we can go special hanging it should automatically populate
• 16:00 - 16:30 a half inch and the dialog may look slightly different on a pc but the basic principles are there and then you just do that for all of these um one thing to remember is if this is instead of brown it's it's red and instead of this it's green site in both mla and apa you ref um you sort or organize uh by you alphabetize your references so group brown would go top
• 16:30 - 17:00 i can just cut and paste just don't cut paste over things and then green would come up and now i have those in alphabetical order what else do we need to remember about this does anybody have any thoughts um
• 17:00 - 17:30 okay so true so say and okay there's a couple things there and before so first um say you have two works by the same author um if they're in the same year so say this is not say this one was reinforcing their existing linguistics and this is um breaking i don't know because that's mean um but they both came out in the same year i would do something like this and i would have to carry that up through
• 17:30 - 18:00 um above in the essay itself so i'd label them a and b i believe you would also if i'm remembering correctly do a triple dash i have to go look that up so but if you are doing the same author you can i'm trying to remember exactly how the indenting works on that um i'd have to go look up one of my book chapters where i actually spent time doing this but again that's why you look it up each time because there are so many ins and outs sometimes with the references sheet
• 18:00 - 18:30 you can do the basics which is better than nothing and you should always do that for the scientific aspect of writing but to adhere to sociocultural norms you want to make sure that you've remembered the culture if it's been a while since you've done all these things so i would go back and double check that but if you have the same author multiple times you can do this you also say it's two works like this then when you are up in the in-text citations the the brown 2008 people would know to come down and code to this
• 18:30 - 19:00 in their minds it's a system between in-text citations and uh references work as a system together so they're trying to do the short form up high so that you get all the information down in the references page and then and there should be a clear connection if you've got a source that's weird and it's not doesn't have a traditional author and you've and you have to kind of foreshorten the title so that it doesn't isn't this massive long you know five word long uh title you can do a shortened form of the title using like the first couple
• 19:00 - 19:30 words of so say this was it uh the first couple words in the title say you did something like this and instead of it being then if there were no author you could say um reinforce existing language reinforce their existing linguistic resources you could just put that in as the citation and since there's no author you could also just put reinforce as a shortened form uh there's so you can look up the specifics on that but there is it you can do that and because
• 19:30 - 20:00 it's linked is not just make sure that none of your other sources start with that word it's kind of like alphabetizing you go into the next unit that make that is different that should be fine as a principle um so there's that uh also don't do this i've seen this on a lot of of a lot of people's papers lately in the last year or two um i don't know if there's some weird template out there that says number your sources but don't is the bottom line you don't do that with mla or apa whoever is doing that um
• 20:00 - 20:30 it's kind of a blend between chicago and ieee ish more ieee which is the the engineer's citation style you don't number your sources you alphabetize them and you use hanging indents no bullets on references okay is there anything about formatting we need to know anything basic i think that's most of it um the only other thing uh let's actually you know what let's do what i said to do let's go
• 20:30 - 21:00 back over to our uh document and do it once over so do we have all that information if there's a department put that there um which i don't think we did i think we might have we can go back and look but there's that bolded title you'll note the header is just like we said the page number everything's double spaced we see in-text citations like they're supposed to note that this student example has all these cool helps so if you get stuck just work down the list it's okay here's an instance of two different headings we've got the literature review which is the
• 21:00 - 21:30 bigger category and then we've got effective teaching a contextual construct which is a smaller category and so instead of being centered it's left justified and it's still bolded so we can see that there's a distinction between those levels and then we see a third level where it's left justified bolded and italicized so now that's a sub cat a subheading within a subheading within a heading does that make sense so it's this doc if you imagine it is a documentary or this large outline you can if you have a document that's bigger that's a really great way to help people
• 21:30 - 22:00 know what the structure of your paper is supposed to be i'll cover this just because i saw it remember that if you want it's not always recommended on papers that are shorter than 1500 words you probably aren't going to need to use big block paragraphing like this um but if you do my rule of thumb this isn't apa format my rule of thumb is whatever you cite if you cite one sentence have it two to four more as commentary analysis and evaluation if you cite a paragraph or if
• 22:00 - 22:30 you cite five lines of text have two to four times more explanation of that because otherwise you're not getting your bang you're not getting all the bang for your buck and quoting that other person if you don't need that whole chunk of text tighten it up but there is a specific way to format anything quotations that are longer than 40 words they should be using block formatting and so that is you can see there aren't quotation marks it's just indented and the page number citations at the end
• 22:30 - 23:00 and the beginning of the sentence introduces the source in this way does that make sense is that good for everybody thumbs up okay um let's check so we didn't talk about figures but that's a special thing if you include fiction figures remember that apa and mla both want captions or notes and they do them slightly differently so definitely take time to look that up especially since in my classes i have
• 23:00 - 23:30 you guys do use a lot of images make sure you look at that specific thing up tables and figures all have notes sometimes they have and with both i think apa and mla they should have a special section at the bottom maybe not maybe they just if you've got the note there so if it's only one or two maybe you can i'm not going to actually comment on that because i have to go look it up and i don't have time to do it right now but you can see how this the hanging indents are here you can see that these are alphabetized
• 23:30 - 24:00 and i think that's good is there anything else we're seeing that we need to take into account aside from go look up images um depending on your citation style yeah right we don't need to include an abstract correct abstracts are not required abstracts are nice if you have a longer paper did this one use it this one didn't have one so abstracts aren't required they're nice with longer papers because it gives people a chance to read a quick summary
• 24:00 - 24:30 of the whole of your paper including final uh conclusions and major findings in research so and if you did include an abstract it it wouldn't be part of the word count so with that i think i'm going to i'm going to stop on apa format if unless people have questions what's your question i was just wondering if you could show us
• 24:30 - 25:00 yes let's do that