NUR 322 / APN Nursing Research: APA 6th

The Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is the current standard for APA. Visit APAstyle.org for offer tutorials, sample papers, frequently asked questions, an APA Style blog, and many other resources for helping you learn APA Style.  

A DOI is a alphanumeric code which identifies an article; just like your Social Security Number identifies you.

APA 6th edition recommends that the DOI be included in an article citation when available.

Not every article has a DOI. Older articles are more likely to have not been assigned one.

If you are citing an article you obtained in print and you cannot find an existing DOI, you may cite the article without one.

If you are citing an article you obtained electronically, you are expected to make a reasonable effort to find a DOI for the article. (Check the article itself or use the Free DOI Lookup below.) If you cannot find a DOI, then include additional information such as the database name or the URL. (See the DOI and URL Flowchart below.) 

ISU students shouldn't have to buy articles! Check our Catalog, our E-Journal Search, ScienceDirect, and Interlibrary Loan to obtain full-text articles.

DO NOT DISCARD YOUR APA 5TH MANUAL. IT CONTAINS BETTER EXPLANATIONS OF CITING THAN THE 6TH EDITION.

"Space twice after punctuation marks at the end of a sentence." (p. 88)

"Include the digital object identifier (DOI) in the reference if one is assigned..." (p. 198) "When a DOI is used, no further retrieval information is needed to identify or locate the content." (p. 191) If no DOI has been assigned to the content, provide the home page URL... (p. 191)

APA Style uses five levels of headings with distinct text styles (3.02-3.03).

When stating approximate lengths of time, spell out the number (i.e., "about two weeks ago") (p. 111)

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, 6th ed

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.  Chicago 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.

David Taylor (peakdavid)

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.

Any template is not necessarily guaranteed to be free of errors. You are still responsible for the accuracy of APA style in your paper.

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.

Saint Mary's University Writing Center wrote some APA template for the 6th edition you can start with.

"Spelling should conform to standard American English as exemplified in Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2005), the standard spelling reference for APA journals and books..." (APA Manual, 2010, p. 96)

Note that Webster dictionaries are not Merriam-Webster dictionaries.