Definition of Style-APA Standards

The acronym APA in English stands for American Phychological Association. In 1929 this entity created homogeneous standards for publishing and presentation of written documents. The purpose of these rules was obvious: to provide common criteria so that documents were written according to uniform rules. The set of these standards is what is known as the APA style or standards.

A group of psychologists and experts in communication They carefully studied how human beings mentally process the information that appears in documents. Based on this study, a standard adapted to the needs of the readers was created.

Numerous entities, administrations and authors have decided to adopt the APA standards, especially those that refer to the citation of textual references.

In relation to the presentation of a written document, some APA rules are as follows:

1) a margin 2.54 cm,

2) an indentation of five spaces,

3) for the citation it is necessary to enclose quotation marks and mention the

Author (for example, "I like you when you shut up because you are absent" (Pablo Neruda) and

4) paper size: 8.5 "x 11".

Apart from these specific standards, the APA presents a detailed definition on a wide range of issues, such as font size, abbreviations, punctuation, elaboration of tables and figures, line spacing, citation of authors, etc. Obviously, all these references are very useful in the work of investigation, monographs or thesis.

Thanks to the APA standards, the international scientific community can communicate and understand better and, in parallel, the readers of everyone shares the same criteria to correctly interpret the information that appears in documents writings.

APA Publications Manual

The entire set of standards is collected in a manual, which in the Anglo-Saxon world is known as the "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association". This publication is not only intended to disseminate the standard for filing documents, but the standards are periodically reviewed and updated. This constant reissue has a lot to do with the emergence of new technologies.

In this sense, its last edition dates from 2016 and is the sixth edition since 1929. On the other hand, the APA publishes a weekly publication where different technical aspects related to the editing of texts and documents are presented.

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