Concept in Definition ABC

To carry out academic work or for any investigation rigorous, it is convenient to use a reference system accepted by the international community. One of these systems is known as the APA style. It is a set of rules related to the use of citations and bibliographic references.

Objectives of the APA style

The purpose of this style is standardization of the way of writing to facilitate the work of researchers, students and editors.

On the other hand, it is intended to promote the ethical and legal use of the information to avoid plagiarism or any form of manipulation of the information.

Verbatim citations, paraphrases and bibliographic references

The acronym APA corresponds to the American Psychological Assocition, an entity that from its origins promoted the unification of criteria for all types of research, such as doctoral theses or any other work of investigation.

The APA standards establish the difference between verbatim citation and paraphrase. The first is to cite the

text of an author reproducing exactly his words and indicating them in quotation marks. The second shows the idea contained in an original writing, but using the author's own words. Both forms of citation must include the reference of the original source and it is usual to do so at the end of the citation between parentheses and including the Format author's last name, year and page number.

An important aspect of the APA style is related to bibliographic references. A reference must contain the following information: name of the author, the date of publication, the title of the work and the information of the publication. With these suitably ordered data, the reader is informed about the sources consulted to prepare a writing.

APA style manuals are periodically updated

It is necessary to update all the information because the formats used are constantly renewed. It should not be forgotten that there are printed, electronic and audiovisual documents and all of them must be cited with unified criteria.

This standardization system focuses mainly on the areas of social Sciences, psychology Y education. There are other systems that start from the same general principle and are used in other types of disciplines (for example, the CSE style is used in biology, the Harvard style in physics and natural Sciences, Chicago style in humanities and the Vancouver style in biomedicine).

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APA Style Themes