APA Formatting and Style (7th ed.) for Student Papers
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APA 7th ed. Fillable Word Template and Sample Paper
- APA 7th ed. Template Download this Word document, fill out the title page and get writing!
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The following PDF provides a sample paper written in the APA style to demonstrate visually how the guidelines work in action. This PDF is used with thanks and full credit to the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) , which maintains a robust online guide to a variety of style guides, avoiding plagiarism, and writing at the academic level in general. They are strongly recommended as a resource if you need something more in depth than this guide provides.
“APA Sample Paper.” APA Sample Paper - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University , Purdue OWL / Purdue University, 30 Jan. 2020, owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/apa_sample_paper.html. Accessed on 2 Feb. 2024.
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APA Style 7th Edition Tutorials for Students in Psychology and Social Work
What is apa style.
- The Importance of Citing
Why is APA Style needed?
How do i get started with apa style, let us practice what we have learned, attribution and acknowledgement.
- Basics of APA Style Tutorial
- Reference Entry Elements
- Reference Examples
- Reference List
- In-Text Citations
- Student Paper Format
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Origination of APA Style
- Where did APA Style come from?
Commonly Used APA Related Terms
Abstract : Abstract is a brief synopses of article. It provides a brief but comprehensive summary of the article.
Citing : In the context of academic writing, citing is the act of acknowledging the sources of information you have used when writing your work.
Citation: A citation gives credit to a source, and contains publication information such as author(s), title and date.
DOI (digital object identifier): It is a unique alphanumeric string assigned to a digital object, mainly a scholarly article, to provide a persistent link to its location on the internet.
In-Text Citation : It is a brief note that appears within the body of the paper and briefly identifies the cited work by its author and date of publication. An in-text citation should always match the corresponding entry in the reference list at the end of paper.
Paraphrasing : A paraphrase restates another’s idea (or your own previously published idea) in your own words.
Plagiarism : It is the act of presenting the words, ideas, or images of another as your own; it denies creators of content the credit they are due.
Quoting : It is the act of reproducing the exact wording used by the original author. Direct quotations appear within quotation marks and end with a citation.
Reference : It contains details about one cited work, generally including four elements: author, date, title, and source.
Reference List : It identifies all the sources you cited in the text of your paper. It generally is at the end of the paper and definitely on a new page after the text of your paper.
APA Style is the most common writing style used in college and career. Its purpose is to promote excellence in communication by helping writers create clear, precise, and inclusive sentences with a straightforward scholarly tone. It addresses areas of writing such as how to
- format a paper so it looks professional;
- credit other people’s words and ideas via citations and references to avoid plagiarism; and
- describe other people with dignity and respect using inclusive, bias-free language.
APA Style is primarily used in the behavioral sciences, which are subjects related to people, such as psychology, education, and nursing. It is also used by students in business, engineering, communications, and other classes. Students use it to write academic essays and research papers in college, and professionals use it to conduct, report, and publish scientific research.
In addition, APA Style provides you with a powerful tool that will hep you avoid deliberate or unintentional plagiarism. Please review the Avoiding Plagiarism Guide created by the APA experts to understand what two common types of plagiarism are and how to avoid them.
Why is learning citations important? Citations help readers understand where the information used in your paper comes from, enabling them to trace the path of that information. When readers wish to explore a specific point or reference cited in the text, citations make it easier by providing information about your sources in a standardized format.
Besides showing readers where you obtained information, using citations also has a strong ethical purpose. In academic writing, it is important to credit ideas that are not your own. Citations allow you to integrate the ideas of others with your own thoughts in a fair and honest way.
The reference formats for APA Style manuals are as follows:
APA Style provides a foundation for effective scholarly communication because it helps authors present their ideas in a clear and concise, and organized manner. Uniformity and consistency enable readers to (a) focus on the ideas being presented rather than formatting and (b) scan works quickly for key points, findings, and sources. When style works best, ideas flow logically, sources are credited appropriately, and papers are organized predictably and consistently.
Students are encouraged to first learn about APA Style by reading works written in APA Style. A couple of guides created by APA experts from the American Psychological Association can help you with that:
Anatomy of a Journal Article https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/anatomy-journal-article.pdf
Scholarly journal articles share a common anatomy or structure. Each part of an article serves a specific purpose. The handout of Anatomy of a Journal Article explains how journal articles are structured and how to become more efficient at reading and understanding them. Understanding the structure of a scholarly article and the purpose of each part helps you grasp a strategy called targeted reading. Targeted reading means to read specific sections of research articles first to determine if the article seems useful for your research topic. This way you will save time, find useful article faster, and choose which articles to read in full.
Reading and Understanding Abstracts https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reading-abstracts.pdf
Abstracts are short summaries of scientific research articles. The handout of Reading & Understanding Abstracts explains the definition and purpose of abstracts and the benefits of reading them, including analysis of a sample abstract. The skill of reading and understanding abstracts of scholarly articles not only saves time but also helps you conduct better research and write more effectively.
APA Style Writing Principles https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/writing-principles.pdf
The poster created by APA experts shows the three main principles of APA Style: clarity, precision, and inclusion and lists steps on how to achieve them. As a student writer, you always should write your academic paper with clarity, precision, and inclusion.
Research Article Activity https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/apa-style-research-activity.pdf
Reading research articles is not an easy task for you as a student. The Research Article Activity designed by APA Style experts aims to make it easy to read and understand a scholarly article. This activity worksheet helps you find, cite, analyze, and summarize a research article. Completing this activity breaks down a lengthy research article into easily understandable chunks. This way helps you better understand the study in the article before you write about it.
The information in this Guide is courtesy of the official APA Style website by the American Psychological Association.
Source Credit: Information on this LibGuide comes from APA Style website https://apastyle.apa.org/ This website has a wealth of free and authoritative resources designed to help anyone new to APA Style.
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- Last Updated: Apr 6, 2024 12:06 PM
- URL: https://research.ewu.edu/APAStyleTutorial
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- How to Paraphrase | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples
How to Paraphrase | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples
Published on April 8, 2022 by Courtney Gahan and Jack Caulfield. Revised on June 1, 2023.
Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas into your own words. Paraphrasing a source involves changing the wording while preserving the original meaning.
Paraphrasing is an alternative to quoting (copying someone’s exact words and putting them in quotation marks ). In academic writing, it’s usually better to integrate sources by paraphrasing instead of quoting. It shows that you have understood the source, reads more smoothly, and keeps your own voice front and center.
Every time you paraphrase, it’s important to cite the source . Also take care not to use wording that is too similar to the original. Otherwise, you could be at risk of committing plagiarism .
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Table of contents
How to paraphrase in five easy steps, how to paraphrase correctly, examples of paraphrasing, how to cite a paraphrase, paraphrasing vs. quoting, paraphrasing vs. summarizing, avoiding plagiarism when you paraphrase, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about paraphrasing.
If you’re struggling to get to grips with the process of paraphrasing, check out our easy step-by-step guide in the video below.
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Putting an idea into your own words can be easier said than done. Let’s say you want to paraphrase the text below, about population decline in a particular species of sea snails.
Incorrect paraphrasing
You might make a first attempt to paraphrase it by swapping out a few words for synonyms .
Like other sea creatures inhabiting the vicinity of highly populated coasts, horse conchs have lost substantial territory to advancement and contamination , including preferred breeding grounds along mud flats and seagrass beds. Their Gulf home is also heating up due to global warming , which scientists think further puts pressure on the creatures , predicated upon the harmful effects extra warmth has on other large mollusks (Barnett, 2022).
This attempt at paraphrasing doesn’t change the sentence structure or order of information, only some of the word choices. And the synonyms chosen are poor:
- “Advancement and contamination” doesn’t really convey the same meaning as “development and pollution.”
- Sometimes the changes make the tone less academic: “home” for “habitat” and “sea creatures” for “marine animals.”
- Adding phrases like “inhabiting the vicinity of” and “puts pressure on” makes the text needlessly long-winded.
- Global warming is related to climate change, but they don’t mean exactly the same thing.
Because of this, the text reads awkwardly, is longer than it needs to be, and remains too close to the original phrasing. This means you risk being accused of plagiarism .
Correct paraphrasing
Let’s look at a more effective way of paraphrasing the same text.
Here, we’ve:
- Only included the information that’s relevant to our argument (note that the paraphrase is shorter than the original)
- Introduced the information with the signal phrase “Scientists believe that …”
- Retained key terms like “development and pollution,” since changing them could alter the meaning
- Structured sentences in our own way instead of copying the structure of the original
- Started from a different point, presenting information in a different order
Because of this, we’re able to clearly convey the relevant information from the source without sticking too close to the original phrasing.
Explore the tabs below to see examples of paraphrasing in action.
- Journal article
- Newspaper article
- Magazine article
Once you have your perfectly paraphrased text, you need to ensure you credit the original author. You’ll always paraphrase sources in the same way, but you’ll have to use a different type of in-text citation depending on what citation style you follow.
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It’s a good idea to paraphrase instead of quoting in most cases because:
- Paraphrasing shows that you fully understand the meaning of a text
- Your own voice remains dominant throughout your paper
- Quotes reduce the readability of your text
But that doesn’t mean you should never quote. Quotes are appropriate when:
- Giving a precise definition
- Saying something about the author’s language or style (e.g., in a literary analysis paper)
- Providing evidence in support of an argument
- Critiquing or analyzing a specific claim
A paraphrase puts a specific passage into your own words. It’s typically a similar length to the original text, or slightly shorter.
When you boil a longer piece of writing down to the key points, so that the result is a lot shorter than the original, this is called summarizing .
Paraphrasing and quoting are important tools for presenting specific information from sources. But if the information you want to include is more general (e.g., the overarching argument of a whole article), summarizing is more appropriate.
When paraphrasing, you have to be careful to avoid accidental plagiarism .
This can happen if the paraphrase is too similar to the original quote, with phrases or whole sentences that are identical (and should therefore be in quotation marks). It can also happen if you fail to properly cite the source.
Paraphrasing tools are widely used by students, and can be especially useful for non-native speakers who may find academic writing particularly challenging. While these can be helpful for a bit of extra inspiration, use these tools sparingly, keeping academic integrity in mind.
To make sure you’ve properly paraphrased and cited all your sources, you could elect to run a plagiarism check before submitting your paper. And of course, always be sure to read your source material yourself and take the first stab at paraphrasing on your own.
If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.
- ChatGPT vs human editor
- ChatGPT citations
- Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
- Using ChatGPT for your studies
- What is ChatGPT?
- Chicago style
- Critical thinking
Plagiarism
- Types of plagiarism
- Self-plagiarism
- Avoiding plagiarism
- Academic integrity
- Consequences of plagiarism
- Common knowledge
To paraphrase effectively, don’t just take the original sentence and swap out some of the words for synonyms. Instead, try:
- Reformulating the sentence (e.g., change active to passive , or start from a different point)
- Combining information from multiple sentences into one
- Leaving out information from the original that isn’t relevant to your point
- Using synonyms where they don’t distort the meaning
The main point is to ensure you don’t just copy the structure of the original text, but instead reformulate the idea in your own words.
Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.
However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly cite the source . This means including an in-text citation and a full reference, formatted according to your required citation style .
As well as citing, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.
Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas in your own words.
So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?
- Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
- Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
- Paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely in your own words and properly cite the source .
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To present information from other sources in academic writing , it’s best to paraphrase in most cases. This shows that you’ve understood the ideas you’re discussing and incorporates them into your text smoothly.
It’s appropriate to quote when:
- Changing the phrasing would distort the meaning of the original text
- You want to discuss the author’s language choices (e.g., in literary analysis )
- You’re presenting a precise definition
- You’re looking in depth at a specific claim
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Gahan, C. & Caulfield, J. (2023, June 01). How to Paraphrase | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/how-to-paraphrase/
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Sample Student Paper (continued) 66 • PAPER ELEMENTS AND FORMAT journal article reference, 10.1 YouTube video reference, 10.12 short URL, 9.36 book reference, 10.2 report reference, 10.4 blog post reference, 10.1 conference presentation reference, 10.5 edited book chapter reference, 10.3 shortDOI, 9.36 ELEMENTS & FORMAT
Authors' names are written below the title, with one double-spaced blank line between them. Names should be written as follows: First name, middle initial(s), last name. Note: THE The STUDENT student version VERSION of APA OF 7th does APA no 7th require EDITION an abstract. DOES NOT.
Note: This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), which released in October 2019. The equivalent resource for the older APA 6 style can be found here. Media Files: APA Sample Student Paper , APA Sample Professional Paper This resource is enhanced by Acrobat PDF files. Download the free Acrobat Reader
SAMPLE APA-7 PAPER FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS 7 paper; same on all pages), an author's note, and an abstract. Note that the first "paragraph" under the author's note on the title page is ...
Headings: Use headings in your paper to distinguish between main sections and sub-sections. Format for the Five Levels of Headings in APA Style Level Format 1 Centered, Bold, Capitalize Major Words Text begins as a new indented paragraph. 2 Left Align, Bold, Capitalize Major Words Text begins as a new indented paragraph.
SAMPLE APA-FORMATTED PAPERS American Psychological Association. (2020). Sample papers. APA style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format ...
APA 7 Sample Paper. FYI: APA no longer recommends running heads for students unless required by the instructor. The page numbers are in the upper right-hand corner. The full title will be bolded, centered, and in the upper half of the first page (3-4 lines down). It should also be separated from the rest of the title page information by one ...
Following the American Psychological Association's Guidelines. The paper's title should be centered, bolded, and written in title case. It should be 3-4 lines below the top margin. FirstName LastName. Department of English, UW-Eau Claire. ENGL 999: Course Name. Dr. Professor's Name. September 2, 2020. APA student papers require 4 major ...
In this sample paper, we've put four blank lines above the title. Commented [AF3]: Authors' names are written below the title, with one double-spaced blank line between them. Names should be written as follows: First name, middle initial(s), last name. Commented [AF4]: Authors' affiliations follow immediately after their names.
An APA Research Paper Model. Thomas Delancy and Adam Solberg wrote the following research paper for a psychology class. As you review their paper, read the side notes and examine the following: The use and documentation of their numerous sources. The background they provide before getting into their own study results.
Sample Paper APA 7th ed. Our APA sample paper shows you how to format the main parts of a basic research paper. APA 7th Sample Papers from Purdue Owl << Previous: Block Quotations; Next: Government Documents and Legal Materials >> Last Updated: Apr 1, 2024 10:02 AM;
The Concise APA Handbook: APA 7th Edition; Reference Components. Article Examples ; Book Examples ; Internet Resources and Other Examples ; Media Examples ; Finding the DOI ; APA Reference Quick Guide; Legal Citation--Reference Components. Legal Cases ; Statutes ; Sample Annotated Student Paper; Annotated Bibliography; Handouts and Guides; Need ...
APA Sample Paper. All spacing must be double-spaced, including heading per APA Manual, p. 229. The Running head is an abbreviated The Running title, it head can be is trimmed an abbreviated to 2 or 3 keywords, title, it and can can be no be more trimmed than 50 to 2 characters, or 3 keywords, per APA Manual, and p. 229. can be All no spacing ...
1. Annotated APA Sample Paper and Style Guide for Student Writers (6th Edition) Center and double-space your title, author(s), and institutional affiliation in the top half of your first page (p. 23). If your title runs more than one line (here and on page 3), you may insert a break wherever you want or can just let your title wrap onto a new ...
The following paper acts as a sample for APA 7 formatting. You may look back and forth between your own draft and this sample to see whether you're following paper formatting expectations. If you read within the sections about in-text citations and the references page, you'll find details about how to format those references and citations.
The following PDF provides a sample paper written in the APA style to demonstrate visually how the guidelines work in action. This PDF is used with thanks and full credit to the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab), which maintains a robust online guide to a variety of style guides, avoiding plagiarism, and writing at the academic level in general.
Place your paper title 3 or 4 lines down from your paper's top margin. The title's typeface should appear in boldface and title case. This title should also be placed at the top of your paper's first page of text. Each of the following items appear centered, double spaced, in title case and regular typeface: 2.
Publication Manual, 7th edition: References (10.1, p. 317; 10.2, p. 321); Format of the author element (9.8, p. 286) Special Rules. Images: Figures and Tables. Images in APA style are divisible into two categories: figures (a visual element such as a photo or graph) and tables (data organized into columns and rows).
Abstract: Abstract is a brief synopses of article.It provides a brief but comprehensive summary of the article. Citing: In the context of academic writing, citing is the act of acknowledging the sources of information you have used when writing your work.. Citation: A citation gives credit to a source, and contains publication information such as author(s), title and date.
Source text Paraphrase "The current research extends the previous work by revealing that listening to moral dilemmas could elicit a FLE [foreign-language effect] in highly proficient bilinguals. … Here, it has been demonstrated that hearing a foreign language can even influence moral decision making, and namely promote more utilitarian-type decisions" (Brouwer, 2019, p. 874).
The purpose of this research was to examine associations between subjective wellbeing and emotional intelligence in the Lithuanian youth sample. In the research, a simple random sample consisted of 556 respondents. The procedure was administered online and followed the General Data Protection Regulation guidelines. Before data gathering, this study was reviewed and approved by the research ...