WRITTING STYLE 1
Lessons Learned About Writing Style
Alyson Jones
Department of Psychology, Liberty University
PSYC 255: Introduction to Research
Professor Keaglhan Macon
September 12, 2020
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Lessons Learned About Writing Style
There are multiple formats that research papers can be written in. In this paper I am going
to talk about how to write a research paper in APA (American Psychological Association) format.
There are many different factors that go into formatting a paper in APA style. It is important to
understand all the information needed to format a paper correctly. With APA formatting changing
often, it is also important to keep yourself updated on how it has changed. This paper will also
talk about where you can gather information and how different types of information should be
written in the references section and ho to correctly cite in-text citations.
APA Formatting Concepts
Personal Communication Formatting
Personal communications are works that are not searchable or recoverable by anyone
reading your paper. Any information that you gather from emails, texts, conversations, and even
classroom lectures are included in personal communications. For example, if you are texting
someone or chatting with someone online about what you are researching and they give you
original information for research they have done on their own, that would be considered a
personal communication and would need to be cited as such. You can also cite personal
interviews as personal communications, however, interviews that you conduct as part of your
own original research must be cited differently (Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association 7th ed.; American Psychological Association; 2020.)
The interesting thing about personal communications is that they are not put into the reference
list at the end of your paper. The reason you do not add them into the references, is because they
are not retrievable. You still must cite them in text though. To cite in text, you must add the first
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initial and last name, say that it is a personal communication and supply the date of the
conversation. More information on citing personal communications can be found in chapter eight
of the “Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association”.
Different Levels of Heading
As mentioned in the introduction there are many pieces that go into writing a paper in
APA style. One of those is the different levels of heading. A heading is what tells the reader what
section of the paper they are entering. Level 1 headings are used for each main section of your
paper. Level 2 headings are used for each section inside the level 1 heading. There is also level 3,
4 and 5 headings. Each is a sub section to the one above it. Every time you start a new main
section, you must use a level 1 heading (APA, 7th edition).
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
DOIs are used when you obtain information through an online journal in the form of a
PDF. The DOI is usually found at the top of the PDF near the copyright date (Crawford, 2017).
Jerry Falwell Jr. Library Resources
Since I am studying Criminal Psychology, I went to the online library to find what
resources are available to me to help me along the way. Books, journals, and articles are all
available to me in the online library. Researching is very new to me so I would need to take a lot
of time to sit down and go through every single thing that I found so that I know what it actually
talks about and if it really is any help to me. Just noticing the ones that immediately came up
when I was doing the search, there are a lot of scholarly articles and books. Much more
information than what I would find doing a simple google search. Much more accurate as well.
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Finding Scholarly Sources
When searching the internet for information on your research paper it is important to
remember to look for scholarly sources so that the information you receive is accurate and
sufficient (Crawford, 2019). Using Google as a search engine can give you good results but it is
not likely. There are a couple other databases you can use to find information such as PsycINFO
and PsycARTICLES. PsycINFO is a great database to use as it has information that goes all the
way back to the 1600’s (Crawford, 2019). However, once you find an article or journal you want,
you will have to go to your university library to find the full article. PsycARTICLES, even
though the amount of information it houses is smaller than PsycINFO, the information it has are
full articles. Meaning that you do not have to go to another place to read the entire article. Both
databases are good ways to find scholarly sources.
Formatting References
The APA manual is the best place to go to find how to format your references and in-text
citations.
A Conference Session
The information on how to format a conference session is on page 332 in the APA
manual. The reference must include the author, date, title, and source you retrieved it from, in
that order.
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Fistek, A., Jester, E., & Sonnenberg, K. (2017, July 1-15) Everybody’s got a little music in them:
Using therapy to connect engage, and motivate [Conference Session]. Autism Society National
Conference, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
https://asa.confex.com/asa/2017/webprogramarchives/Sesions9517.html
(Fistek et al., 2017)
Introduction to Research Textbook
Information on how to format books and anything that falls into the category of published
works is on page 321 in the APA manual. This reference must include the author, the date it was
published and the publisher.
Crawford, R. (2019). Introduction to research: Less Fright, More Insight. Kendall Hunt.
(Crawford, 2019)
Unpublished Manuscript
Information on how to format a reference from an unpublished manuscript can be found
on page 335 of the APA manual. It must include author, date, title, and the source you retrieved it
from.
Jones, A. (2020). How to Format References in APA Style. [Unpublished Manuscript].
Department of Psychology, Liberty University.
(Jones et al., 2020)
Formatting the APA Manual
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Information on how to cite the APA manual can be found on page 323 of the APA
manual.
American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (7th ed.).
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 7th ed.; American Psychological
Association; 2020.
Scholarly Journal with a DOI
Information on how to format a Scholarly Journal with a DOI in your references can be
found on page 316 of the APA manual.
Jones, A. (2020). Title of Article. Title of Journal with page numbers. Httpd://doi.org/xxxx
(Jones, 2020)
