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I need urgent help formatting by paper according to the APA referencing style. In the last draft that I had sent to my supervisor he had asked to me check the formatting of my paper, as it was not strictly according to APA guidelines. I made the required changes in the headings, and in-text citations which weren’t formatted correctly but now he has asked me to revise the writing style and conventions according to APA as well. I am not sure what that means, does the APA style also entail altering the writing style and language in a particular way? Can someone elaborate on what sort of changes I need to make in my writing and how extensive would they be?
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Hi!
You can read blogs on APA referencing, I’m sure you’ll find some posts about the writing style, language and conventions preferred for APA, in the posts. This a blog run by APA itself so it will be a reliable source of information-
http://blog.apastyle.org/ -
I do not know much about the writing conventions specifically for APA but I think these would be relevant for any kind of academic writing, you should not use slang or informal language (words like cool, awesome, AF or abbreviations like ASAP, TGIF) while writing an academic paper. Avoid beginning a sentence with a number, try to use a modifier like “About, Approximately” before doing so. Use qualifiers sparingly, frequent use of words like ‘very, for example, always, usually’ can make the writing seem too informal and lazily done. Also try to limit the use of first person pronouns as much as possible and the overall language for the paper should not appear to have a biased, discriminatory or sexist overtone.
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Hello
I would just like to add a few things to the last response posted on this thread.
• While writing an academic paper one should avoid using double negatives, or repetitive and redundant language construction and do not make generalisations.
• Academic writing should have a very factual tone and approach so avoid making value judgements when you are writing a paper
• Also, using too many quotations in a paper can make it seem as if you do not have much to say and are just trying to meet the word count for the paper. In general keep the quotations to less than 30% of the content of the paper.
• Do not use long and complex sentences that often become one-sentence paragraphs.
That’s all I can think of right now, hope this is helpful!
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