Citing Following the APA Style

Plagiarism is considered immoral, and, thus, when mentioning other people’s thoughts, they must be cited. For this reason, rules and procedures for citing have been established by the American Psychological Association (APA), among other associations. For this analytical essay, a paper by Dalvit et al, 2005, has been analysed to study the usage of the APA style. The results reveal that, even though not all these rules are applied, the authors follow many of them.

Concerning the use of in-text citations, it can be stated that they are adequate regarding APA manual. For instance, when the authors paraphrase Boughey’s words they write, “As far as language problems are concerned, the current approach (…) is mainly informed by studies in the Humanities (Boughey, 2002),” (p.73) including the author’s last name and year. Similarly, when citing a group or institution, its name and year of publication are included. Regarding signal phrases, for example in “According to Heugh (2002), little has changed since the end of Apartheid,” (p.72) the authors include only the year of publication in the parenthesis, as suggested by the APA.

As regards the reference list, it shows certain inconsistencies concerning what has been established by the APA. To start with, the layout chosen does not completely coincide with the APA style. For instance, the reference list is not on a separate page, the title “reference” is not centered in the first line, the list is not double-spaced, and, in the titles, not only the first words are capitalised. Furthermore, they use the word “and” instead of “&” when two or more authors are mentioned. For example, in the reference “ Halliday, M.A.K. and Martin, J.R. (1993). Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,” (p.75) the use of capital letters and the use of the word “and” can be appreciated.

To conclude, it can be said that APA rules and procedures for citing have influenced the authors of the analysed paper up to a certain extent. The influence is mainly seen in the in-texts citations. However, concerning the reference list, its style does not completely coincide with the APA style. This incongruence can especially be seen in the layout and in the capitalization of titles of the reference list.

Reference

Dalvit, L., Murray, S. and Terzoli, A. (2005). Providing increased access to English L2 students of computer science at a South African University. US-China Education Review, Sep. 2005, Vol. 2 (9)

University of Minnesota Center for Writing. (n.d.) Quicktips: APA documentation style: Reference list. University of Minnesota: Student Writing Support. doi: 612.625.1893

University of Minnesota Center for Writing. (n.d.). Quicktips: APA documentation style: In-text citations. University of Minnesota: Student Writing Support. doi: 612.625.1893