When you write a report, you want to make sure that it’s in the correct format. In the business world, presentation is everything, and you want to make sure that you are presenting your data in the correct format. Likewise, you will want to ensure that all academic papers you create are structurally sound and grammatically correct.

One of the pitfalls of writing is accidental plagiarism. With sloppy citation, you can create a bastion of problems that can undermine your research. You will want to conform your writing to the APA style, using APA style citation.

With an APA style template, you are able to quickly and easily format your reports and academic papers. Using an APA style template, you simply enter the information you intend to use, and the formatting is taken care of instantly. In fact, you can insert frequently used citations, using APA software that will store your sources for easy insertion into your APA style template.

The Importance of an APA Style Template

The importance of correct citations is immeasurable. When you pass off other people’s quotations and work as your own, you undermine the confidence of the reader. You want to make sure that you are presenting a scrupulous report, and citing all necessary sources.

APA guidelines have made the documentation process much easier. Using parenthetical citations, you can quickly and easily cite the works of others, avoiding plagiarism and keeping your paper clean. These guidelines have changed since the old days of schooling, and now have been adapted to encompass all sorts of analytical papers and publications.

APA Guidelines for Correct Form

Perhaps you know how to create a bibliography. But times have changed, and now the correct format for citations is a bit different than you might remember. The days of footnotes and endnotes are long gone, along with pages of citations, for each instance of quotations.

What the APA guidelines have done is accomplish documentation with the least amount of hassle. Without unduly interrupting your text, you can quote extensively and give proper credit to the author. In fact, if you quote a single book 56 times, you only need a simple parenthetical citation after each quotation. Then, in your list of works cited, you only need name the publication once.

What Are Parenthetical Citations?

Parenthetical citations are simply citations enclosed in parentheses at the close of the relevant sentence. Usually these consist of the author or editor’s last name, along with a page number. These make for easily inserted documentation, and are usually followed by an alphabetized list of sources at the paper’s end.

Plagiarism can be a pricey mistake, costing money, hassle, and jeopardizing your career. You want to make sure that you are properly using modern standards for documenting your sources as you write. Luckily, the APA Guide provides plenty of helpful guidelines for documenting your sources.

The Price of Plagiarism

The consequences of plagiarism can be dire. Even if you don’t intend to plagiarize another person’s work, you can put your career in jeopardy with a single mistake. You can face law suits, expulsion, and the publication of your paper can be declined, if any small part of your paper is considered plagiarized.

The APA Guide to Citation

The APA Guide helps you avoid these situations by properly citing works that you reference. Whether you’re writing a business report or preparing an academic paper, you can use the APA Guide to properly credit your sources. Because of its easy parenthetical citation format, you can quickly insert your credits in a matter of seconds.

When to Make Citations

You must cite sources for any text you are summarizing, quoting verbatim, and for any idea or theory which is not your own. For instance, if you are citing Klauswitz’s theory on “the fog of war,” you will need to quote his text (or a secondary source) in order to use that phrase in your paper. Even if you are quoting a source with which you do not agree, you still always need to include a citation for the quotation you wish to refute.

The APA format has become standard for academic papers nationwide. The ease of its citation methods and the simplicity of its style has made it widely used in business and academia, alike. By using the APA format, you put yourself ahead of your competitors, by presenting your information in the most correct and most desirable format available.
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The Need for Learning the APA Format

You might ask yourself, “Didn’t I already learn how to format term papers in college?” You very well might have–but that doesn’t mean you know as much as you could. In fact, those who have been out of college for a while might be surprised to learn just how much has changed since then.

Additionally, while many institutions presume familiarity with the APA format, many schools neglect to teach it. This oversight is usually because most universities expect their students to already have a firm grasp on APA style. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you truly do know how to format an analytic paper in the correct form.

Where to Learn APA Format

While you can purchase books on APA guidelines, most will be either too sparse or too verbose. It’s doubtful that you can absorb every single rule given, but “lite” versions are rarely helpful, too. Luckily, by purchasing APA format software, you can receive APA style reference in an easy-to-use, need-to-know basis. These programs usually include easy one-click parenthetical citations, along with APA templates to use with your word processing program.

As you begin to explore standards for writing style, you might find yourself wondering, “What is APA?” The APA is the American Psychological Association, and the APA style is a method of citation they honed for their publications. It has become standard style for many universities and publications, because of its ease and uniformity.

Why Citations Are Important

As humans, our best ideas and analyses build on the knowledge that has been gathered before we came along. Whether you’re performing literary analysis on an archaic poem, or whether you’re writing about the latest scientific or technological principles, you will need to read the works of others. In so doing, you will want to make sure that you are giving credit where credit is due.

Citations enable you to use the works of others as the foundation for your own claims. Using citations, you can easily reference the sources you use as you formulate your new concepts and theories. The APA citation guide allows you to incorporate these easy pieces of documentation into your thesis or term paper.

What Is APA Doing for Academia?

By creating a standard for documentation, APA has revolutionized and streamlined the writing process. When you write a paper requiring extensive quotation, you can end up with a bulky and hard-to-read paper, with most of your page taken up with citations. Such tedious documentation can be difficult on the readers’ eyes, and open the door for needless errors.

So what is APA doing to change this? By creating a documentation style based around parenthetical citations, your citations take merely a few seconds to type. You are able to enclose an abbreviated version of your citation in a set of parentheses at the end of the pertinent sentence. An expounded list of works cited wraps up the paper, with full publication details. This enables you to create a streamlined paper, with the least amount of interruption.