APA Style and Literature

         As one of the many requirements of this class, Exploring Your Digital Portfolio, I have to research an instance where an educator or professional has posted something or been posted about via social media and it has had a drastic negative impact on their personal or professional life, reflecting on how this could have been avoided. The format of this paper is required to be in APA format. APA is a common format used to write a paper. You may have used it before, whether it was high school, college, or within your job. I will be discussing a brief overview of APA style and the format of the APA from this video.

          APA stands for American Psychological Association, which is essentially who created this format. APA style was created when a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers convened and sought to establish a simple set of procedures that would accommodate a variety of components of scientific writing to increase the ease of reading comprehension. 

         There are two key components of APA style; citations, to avoid plagiarism and the kind of rough format title page that makes the paper look like one cohesive whole. If you would like to take a short cut, you can do so. When you are opening up a word document, search for APA style instead of clicking blank. This will bring up a template that has text boxes and sections of information on what to fill out in which section. If you've never written a paper in APA style, this is a great way to start. But, you still need to know what you're doing to fill it out. 

         Before you start your paper, there are a few requirements you must know. As a college student, I have had most professors require 12 point Times New Roman for your font and size. Technically, APA calls for serif/sans serif. Regardless, you should do as your professor or boss has instructed you.  Your paper should also be double spaced, have 1 inch margins, and your running head should be on the left with your page number on the right. Also, there are four main components to an APA style paper; Title page, abstract, body, and references. 

          On your title page, you should have your running head on the top left side of the paper, and your page number on the top right side. For your page number, there is a header section on Microsoft Word. You'll have to check that little box of the header section in order for this to work correctly. Your Running Head is just a shortened version of your title in all capital letters. The first page is the only place you will have the phrase Running Head. On the rest of the pages you should just have the title in all capital letters. Here is an example. 

Half way down the page, you need a few things. The title first and foremost, followed by your name underneath, and the institution it was written for underneath of your name. Although it is not required, at the bottom you may put an author's note, which may include what class this was written for or when it was written. 

          The next component of your paper is the abstract. An abstract is a brief section before your paper that gives a brief overview of your paper in about 300 words. So, every piece of broad information should be included in the abstract as well. To construct your abstract, try going to each of your paragraphs and summarizing each paragraph to use in the abstract. You may also want to include phrases such as "This paper examines___" or "In this paper, research shows that___". You do not want to include any data in the abstract either, you are just giving the gist of what the paper is about. This is the last part of your paper that you should be writing. It is impossible to complete your abstract without first writing your paper. 

         After your abstract comes the body paragraphs. This is where you will spend a majority of your time writing. Before you start writing, you  may want to consider outlining your body paragraphs. This will help you organize your paper, which will help you think about how your paper should be presented. By that, I mean whether you paper is choppy or cohesive. Also, think about how many concepts you want to include, how long and in depth you want to or are required to go, and most importantly think about your content as a whole. Becoming a conscious creator of content is important, as chapter 6 of lol...OMG! says. Say this paper you are writing is getting published online. You want to be careful what is in your paper if it is being published, because remember, everything you post online will leave a footprint. The best way to create a positive online reputation is to think carefully about all of the content that you share on the Web. You may also want to consider the following questions before writing a paper to be a conscious writer: Why are you doing this? Is now the right time? Where is your line between public and private? How controversial do you want to be? Luckily, most APA style papers are research driven. But, you should still take into consideration what kind of content you are putting out there and creating. Whatever the content may be that you are creating, you should always include evidence to back up your information. For example, you want to use credible sources for things such as data, statistics, and quotes, but without plagiarizing. Remember, when you are researching, you want to find credible sources. See who the authors/sponsors are because you may not be looking at the most reliable source. Academic journals and books are likely to be your best sources. Finding recent information will benefit you too, as new data and research is constantly being done. Try to find sources that have been published within the last 5 years. Stockton University also has a Database. You can search all databases at once, or search individually for specific information I need. You can search by discipline, type of content, books, etc. This is a great tool at anyone's disposal. 

          Within your paper, you MUST have in text citations, otherwise your content is considered plagiarized. In the in-text citation, you always need two pieces of information: the year of publication, and the author's last name. If it's a type of source with a page number, you will need that as well. Whether you're directly quoting or paraphrasing, you need to have the information in order to correctly cite the information. If you need more assistance with the format of in-text citations, you can read through A Writer's Reference  or any other reputable APA style guide. Purdue O.W.L. may help you somewhat, but be careful of outdated sources. Here are a few different examples of an in-text citation in APA format. 

You may also cite some quotes within your paper. When a quotation is more than 40 words it's called a block quotation. This isn't always the best idea. You can usually paraphrase the quote to cut the length down. It may feel like you are just trying to fill space to the reader by using a block quote. If you really want to use the long quote, make sure you follow a few rules. Set it off with a colon, indent the entire quote, lose the quotation marks, put a parenthetical after the period, and return to your paragraph without an indent. Here is an example. 

As a suggestion, I have used the ICE model of citing that the youtube video presents. You first want to Introduce with a signal phrase, Cite with an in-text, and Explain using your own insight to connect with the quote with your own body of information. Following this method helps the reader understand that you aren't just using a quote to fill space and that you truly are connecting and understand the quote.

          Finally, the last part of the paper is the reference page. At the top of your page, you want to have the word "References", centered in 12 point font. Style guides that i mentioned earlier will help you format your citation. Make sure you alphabetize your references list by author's last name (only using their first initial after that), the first word if the organization is the author, or the first word if you're using the title. You should use hanging indents like so.

All of this information may seem a bit overwhelming, but for more information you can watch Tom Kluxen from Stockton University explain APA style more in depth.