It has been more than a decade since the sixth edition of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Publication Manual was released, and as you might imagine, in that time a great deal has changed about the way we write, cite and express ourselves. The latest instalment of the gold standard of academic referencing for our profession, APA 7, has been available since October last year, which has given us some time to absorb and reflect on the changes. Here are some of the more prominent examples, as an overview of the direction they have taken this time around.
Moving into the digital age
Reflecting a broader usage of online sources, referencing practices have undergone some (mostly cosmetic) overhauls. You no longer need to write “Retrieved from” ahead of URLs or specify the format of ebooks. DOIs and URLs are presented as hyperlinks for electronic sources, and there are other tweaks regarding references to sites that are regularly updated, such as Wikipedia.
Inclusivity and accessibility
Some of these changes will no doubt seem unnecessary in certain arenas, but large strides have been made to ensure the language we use is in step with reducing or removing bias, and ensuring inclusivity. For example, ‘they’ is now an endorsed gender-neutral pronoun and descriptive phrases replace adjective-nouns when referring to groups of people (“people who use drugs” not “drug users”).
Under this umbrella we should also mention that the range of acceptable fonts has broadened and quotation marks are used around examples instead of italics to improve reader accessibility.
Books and journals have changed
Once again, there are plenty of small adjustments that will take some time to get used to, such as using a book’s copyright date rather than year of publication, and leaving out the place of publication.
On the other hand, we are going to be listing a lot more author names in the reference list, up to 20 from the previous maximum of seven. In-text citations have been streamlined, for example, when it comes to three or more authors, you need only cite the first author et al, and the year.
A matter of format
The words “Running head” will no longer be needed on the title page of a paper, indeed the title page now only requires the page number and the abbreviated version of the paper title at the top.
All headings are now in bold, with heading levels three and five also italicised. And student papers will have different formatting requirements, for example, keywords are not needed for student papers, unless requested by the instructor, and while the font choices allowable have been broadened across all professional papers, students can choose from a wider range of fonts as long as they keep accessibility in mind – namely that the font is legible and consistent (bit.ly/3afdjpj).
Style advice
There are quite a few changes to the technicalities of how we write, many of which have happened with an eye to improving accessibility. Examples include expanded guidance on capitalisation, presenting abbreviations in differing contexts, standardisation of the presentation of numbers across a work and greater flexibility for lists. There are also a lot of examples of tables and figures, and discussion of the use of colour and formatting in a range of scenarios.
The APA produced a comprehensive overview of the main changes (bit.ly/2Udk31d)
For more detailed information on exactly what you need to stay in style and up-to-date, visit apastyle.apa.org