The APA Style blog (2013) listed the top 10 APA mistakes. I would definitely agree these are the top mistakes I see when editing a dissertation. Please know, the university editors flag these as well. Other mistakes I would add, although not technically considered APA mistakes, are missing references and non-matching references, i.e., Janes, 2012 in the reference list and Jones, 2012 in the text.
1. Incorrect use of numbers 2. Incorrect use of hyphenation 3. Incorrect use of et al. 4. Incorrect capitalization and punctuation in headings 5. Use of since instead of because 6. Improperly prepared tables and figures 7. Failure to use the serial comma 8. Failure to spell out abbreviations and acronyms as needed 9. Inconsistent use of double-spacing between lines 10. Incorrect use of and versus the ampersand
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I get a lot of questions about when and how to use et al. When in doubt, it will help if you exchange et al. for “and company.” The first time you list from three to five authors in your text, give all authors credit (i.e., Adams, Bole, Cannon, Dale, & Evans, 2013). The next time and all subsequent times you cite these authors, just list the first author and mention the rest of the authors as “et al.” (i.e., Adams et al., 2013). Just as you would not write Adams, and company; you would not use a comma between the name and et al. Whenever you need to list six or more authors in text, only list the first author and et al. (Adams et al., 2012). If you want to make the authors possessive (Bole’s study, for example), place the apostrophe after the period and before the “s” (i.e., Adams et al.’s study).
The easy way to check if you did this correctly is go to you references and highlight the second or third name of each reference with three or more authors and click “Find.” You should only see the second or third author one time in your text (unless he or she is mentioned in another reference). Hope this helps! Reba asked about an annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by the annotation. An annotation is a summary or a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
When clients ask me how to start a literature review, I recommend starting with an annotated bibliography containing a mixture of approximately 30 recent peer-reviewed journal articles and dissertations. I advise making the annotations longer than the recommended 150 words of a usual annotated bibliography. The purpose of using an annotated bibliography to start the literature review is to organize your thoughts and focus your research. If done properly, an annotated bibliography conducted in this manner will make the dreaded literature review an easily mastered step on the way to dissertation completion. For more information on annotated bibliographies, go to Purdue OWL (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/01/) A reference list consists of all sources cited in the text of a paper, listed alphabetically by author’s surname. A bibliography may include resources that were consulted but not cited in the text as well as an annotated description of each one. Bibliographies may be organized chronologically, or by subject, rather than alphabetically.
If you have been given an assignment that asks for a bibliography, consult your professor for more specifics about the required format. (APA Style Blog, 2013) Purdue Owl (The Owl or Purdue Owl [OWL is an acronym for Online Writing Lab]) is part of the Department of English at Purdue University. The Purdue OWL is one of a doctoral writer’s best friends and something that should be bookmarked or, if you use Google for your browser, always up and readily accessible. The OWL is a quick resource for APA, MLA, and Chicago formatting. (http://owl.english.purdue.edu)
The other resource for doctoral writers that I recommend keeping readily accessible is the APA Style Blog (http://blog.apastyle.org/). Many issues are covered in the blog that are not covered in the manual. Using APA, how do I cite an author if their work is referenced more than once in a single paragraph?6/8/2013 Here’s what the 6th edition of the APA manual says: "Within a paragraph, when the name of the author is part of the narrative...you need not include the year in subsequent nonparenthetical references to a study as long as the study cannot be confused with other studies cited in the article. Do include the year in all parenthetical citations" (pg. 174).
In other words, every time you bring up the author in a new paragraph, you should use the year, but you don’t have to within a paragraph, as long as it’s clear from your wording that you are discussing the same author. If you were giving a direct quotation that needed a parenthetical reference for the page number, then you’d include the year as well. (Source: Purdue Owl, 2013) Free webinar ideal for new doctoral students and suitable for doctoral candidates. Topics include:
- various phases of a doctoral journey - typical pitfalls in the process - what to expect from your mentor, committee, and dean - some useful strategies to cope through dissertation writing - getting it completed **June 15, 2013** (1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST)http://www.dissertationblues.com What better way to start things than with freebies, so here are three free solutions for problems you may have encountered or are currently encountering:
Need to find the digital object identifier (DOI) for journal articles published after 2007, (http://www.crossref.org/), just type in the information you have and this service will find the DOI for you. Need a way to keep track of your references for free, try Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com) which allows one to copy citations into subfolders creating topical folders of resources. Need a way to study and record with colleagues or professors, try Webex (http://www.webex.com/) |
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May 2014
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