Nursing and Allied Health: APA 5th

The Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association will be available on July 1, 2009. Key to the new edition is a fully revamped website APAstyle.org that will offer tutorials, sample papers, frequently asked questions, an APA Style blog, and many other resources for helping you learn APA Style.  The new website will be launched on July 1, 2009.

The University of Queensland in Australia created an updated Style for EndNote Bibliographic Management software that incorporates the 2007 revisions for the 5th edition of the APA style guide to electronic references - American Psychological Association. This can be downloaded from their web site. The Style is not perfect so you still need to learn the new revisions.

Download the Queensland APA Style and save it with your other EndNote Styles on your hard drive at
C:\Program Files\EndNote X2\Styles

APA EndNote Output Style - Univ of Queensland

EndNote: APA Style and Electronic References Tips

Here are some quick links to important information about writing research papers and properly citing your sources.

These are frequently used pages from the APA Manual, 5th ed.

One of the easiest ways for a beginner to follow APA style is to type over a template or paper already in APA style. With a template, the margins, font, headings, and other style features are already set. You just insert your content.

Microsoft Word includes an APA template you can start with. It may be installed on your computer with Microsoft Word.

For Microsoft Word 2007:

• Open Word 2007 and
• Click on the Office button.

• Click New.

• Click More Categories.

• Click Paper and APA Paper Format. Notice that it is provided by Microsoft Corporation. Other APA templates are available but are not necessarily created by Microsoft.

If you don't have the template already, you can download the APA template from Microsoft. Go to the Microsoft Office Web site at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx Search for APA Paper Format.

Any template is not necessarily guaranteed to be free of errors, but I have looked over the APA template and I have found only one error.* This is not an endorsement of Microsoft or its products.

If you cut and paste into a template and, to your dismay, your font and formatting changes, you may need to Paste Special as Unformatted Text. This procedure will paste in new words but not change fonts, italics, bolding, or other formatting features.

* You must give a page number when citing direct quotations in text. See page 117 of the APA Manual.

Rasmussen College Library System

Follow the style guide – ALWAYS.  This is not time to be creative.  Don’t agonize about why the guide tells you to do something, just do it!

Be consistent.  If the style guide says to use italics for the title of the book or journal (and Chicago does) use italics ALWAYS.

Don’t mix style guides.  Chcago and MLA cannot be used simultaneously in a paper.  Choose one and stick to it.

If you don’t know how to cite a particular source, look it up.  The style guide has thought of nearly every type of source.

Print off the citation of the source you consulted, when you consult it. Don’t say, “I’ll do it later,” or “I am not sure I want to use this source, I’ll go back to it if I do.”  Going back later without the citation is often impossible.