Dear Writer, good evening,

Please kindly look into the post on the discussion board from Kim. Please respond to her post accordingly. Thank you.

The APA Writing Checklist has been a useful tool in reviewing what is expected and the format needed for correct APA writing. Having the checklist available has proven to be invaluable when 'proofing' the papers prior to submission. I am a 'hands on' learner, so I do love books over online. When I realized there were changes between the 6^th and 7^th editions of the American Psychological Association (APA) manual, I purchased a copy. Being able to see what I need to change and how to do that is quite beneficial. Even with the book, I still struggled with in-text citations.

The in-text citations proved to be a challenge for me, until Professor Wagnor pointed out some common errors I had made. I had thought that citing once or twice in a paragraph was frequent enough. However, it was pointed out that it wasn't quite enough. Taking the suggestion she had made, I looked up how often one should cite. Boston University gave the best guide, as it presented it in a list. There are five basic principles that one needs to be mindful of when citing. 1. Quoting the exact words of an author. This conveys the concept isn't your own, but that of the cited author. 2. Paraphrasing an author's words also requires citation. 3. Summarizing requires citation. Summarizing is still 'borrowing' the author's ideas. "...Even if your entire paragraph is a summary, you should cite in each sentence rather than at the end of the paragraph" (Boston University [BU], n.d.). 4. Anytime credible statistics, data, and dates are used, the source needs to be credited with the facts. However, they must be from a credible source. If the data used is common sense or data that is commonly known, then it does not need to be cited. 5. If a text lends itself to a greater understanding of context, then the source needs to be cited (Boston University [BU], n.d.).

Another difference between the APA 6^th edition and 7^th edition is the citation of authors. In the 6^th edition if there were seven surnames and initials for a reference, then the in-text citation would have all seven were listed followed by the date. This changed in the 7^th edition. With the in-text citations, the last name of the first author was listed followed by et al., and year of publication (Bradley et al., 2020).

References

Boston University. (n.d.). When to cite. Boston University School of Public Health. https://www.bu.edu/sph/students/on-campus-students/academic-accommodations-and-support/communication-resources/when-to-cite/#:~:text=You%20must%20cite%20the%20source,that%20is%20not%20your%20own.

Bradley, L., Noble, N., & Hendricks, B. (2020). The apa publication manual: Changes in the seventh edition. The Family Journal, 28(2), 126-130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480720911625

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