LESSONS ABOUT WRITING STYLES 1
Lessons Learned About Writing Styles
Student Name
Department of Psychology, Liberty University
Psych. 255: Introduction to Research
Dr. Robyn Brown
February 6, 2023
LESSONS ABOUT WRITING STYLES 2
Lessons Learned About Writing Styles
A psychologist's primary formatting style is APA. Using an APA format allows authors to
present their ideas clearly and in an organized manner, resulting in better communication. Papers
on complex topics benefit from the APA style. This simplifies the reading and understanding of
papers. The paper should be written in a uniform format that cites sources the same way every
time, it gives it better flow and helps keep the focus on the content of the paper. For APA style,
the preferred typeface is Times New Roman and the font size is 12 point. The standard margins
are 1 inch all around and double spacing should be used throughout.
The style directions encourage authors to fully reveal essential information and allow
proofreaders to omit minor distractions, such as errors in pauses, capitalization, citations, and
statistics (American Psychological Association, 2020). When style everything best,
plans flow logically, beginnings are believed suitably, and papers are arranged
predictably and usually. A dialect that emphasizes people's values and dignity
is used by authors regarding their research, including fault-finding details to
allow lecturers to evaluate conclusions and other researchers to copy the findings possibly.
APA Formatting Concepts
Personal Communication
Personal communication is works that cannot be retrieved by readers and are cited in the
text as personal communications. Personal communications include emails, personal interviews,
phone conversations, text messages, and more (American Psychological Association [APA],
2020). Whenever you communicate with someone through personal communication sources,
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always cite. When communications are too sensitive or confidential to be released in a readable
form, cite them as archival materials. Personal communication is not included on the reference
page it is only cited in the text because the information cannot be retrieved. You can find the
instructions in the APA manual located in chapter 8 page 260 about proper formatting for
personal communication.
APA Headings
Headings are important in organizing content and should indicate each point’s
importance. The main thing to remember is that headings outline the key points so readers can
quickly scan a document for information. There is no one right way to do this, and there are
countless ways to organize content, however, Headings serve as a helpful guide for readers. APA
Style uses two types of capitalization for titles of works and headings within works: title case and
sentence case. In the title case, major words are capitalized. In sentence cases, most words are
lowercase (American Psychological Association, 2020).
The DOI System
A digital document's unique identification is called a DOI. Because DOIs are more
enduring than URLs and guarantee that your reader can accurately discover the source, they are
crucial for academic referencing. The reference list entry's last element is the DOI or URL. The
majority of reference list items conclude with a DOI or a URL because so much scholarship can
be found and/or accessed online. A DOI, or digital object identifier, is a special alphanumeric
string that distinguishes information and offers a constant connection to where it may be found
online. A prefix and a suffix are contained in DOIs, which start with the number 10 (American
Psychological Association, 2020). Like how you may follow debates and reuse of your peer
LESSONS ABOUT WRITING STYLES 4
reviews throughout the Web with other academic outputs, DOIs will make it simple for others to
find your open peer reviews.
JFL Exploration
On the JFL website, you can go to the search bar and type in any topic that is being
researched and it will pull up books, articles, databases, and more. If you do the advanced search,
you can just type in the subject in the search bar you can also choose how long ago the
publication date is, and you can also refine your search to content type. When a topic is typed
into the search bar there are a lot of options, and you need to choose which might best work for
your paper. You can access all types of resources through the JFL such as peer-reviewed journal
articles, eBooks, audio, dissertations, and theses, and so much more can be found.
Beyond The JFL
If there is a source, you want that is not in the JFL you can find a website that does
articles and books. If a website ends in .gov or .edu it is considered a good academic site and if
the website ends in .com it is very important to pay attention to detail as those sites are not
entirely reliable. If you want to find some articles you can go to databases such as Academic
Search Complete or other EBSCO databases that allow you to choose "peer-reviewed journals”.
Or google scholar and find credible resources. Use databases such as JSTOR that contain only
scholarly sources. Look for publications from a professional organization.
An array of Common Sources
Religious and Classical Works
LESSONS ABOUT WRITING STYLES 5
Religious writings typically don't have an author. However, a religious text would be
considered to have an editor if it had annotations. When referring to a specific passage in a
religious or classical text or directly citing it, use the canonical numbers for such passages rather
than page numbers (e.g., books, chapters, verses, lines, or cantos). To directly quote from
material with canonically numbered sections, use the name of the book, chapter, verse, line,
and/or canto instead of a page number (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 273).
Depending on the edition of the source you are using, a classical or religious work is either cited
as a book or a website. Classical works and works of classical literature are treated as
republished works.
Crawford Textbook
The introduction to the research textbook contains a section on APA-style writing
explaining why and how psychologists use APA writing in research and why this format style is
important. Writing within the field of psychology follows a standard form developed by the
American Psychological Association (APA). APA created this format so that all authors could
communicate their findings in the same manner (Crawford, 2018, p.24). The textbook is one of
the resources given to write papers and get an idea of how to write research papers in APA
format.
An Unpublished Manuscript
Unpublished works include work that is in progress, has been completed but not yet
submitted for publication, and has been submitted but not yet accepted for publication. For an
unpublished or informally published work, the date should be the year the work was completed
or the year the draft was written. Do not use the words “in preparation,” “submitted,” or
LESSONS ABOUT WRITING STYLES 6
“submitted for publication” in the date element of the reference (American Psychological
Association, 2020, p. 335). The ethical and effective treatment of a manuscript is shared by
authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers from the moment the editor receives the manuscript
until the piece is published. A dissertation or thesis is frequently the starting point for a fresh
researcher's first published work.
APA Manual
Style refers to guidelines for ensuring clear, consistent communication and presentation
in written works. APA Style, as described in this Publication Manual, provides guidelines for
writing scholarly papers. Publishers and instructors often require authors writing for publication
and students writing for a course or degree requirement to follow specific style guidelines to
avoid inconsistencies among and within journal articles, book chapters, and academic papers
(American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 153). The APA manual tells us how to correctly
format an APA research paper as well as tells us why this format is important to use.
Scholarly Journal Article with DOI
A scholarly journal's main objective is to disseminate original research and analysis
created by academics in a particular field of study to other academics and researchers interested
in the subject. The main factor used to determine which articles to include in the database is their
relevance to psychology. Include a DOI for all works that have a DOI, regardless of whether you
used the online version or the print version. Present both DOIs and URLs as hyperlinks (i.e.,
beginning with “http://” or “https://”). Because a hyperlink leads readers directly to the content, it
is not necessary to include the words “Retrieved from” or “Accessed from” before a DOI or URL
(American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 299).
LESSONS ABOUT WRITING STYLES 8
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
Crawford, A.R. (2019). Introduction to research: Less fright, more insight (Custom 3rd ed.).
Kendall Hunt.
