hello and welcome to the lecture that covers the fourth chapter of the APA uh reference guide uh seventh edition uh I have included some or or held on to some things from the previous sixth edition uh to to include in this lecture like other lectures because I I find them to be relevant meaningful and and I don't think they're U uh out of compliance with the seventh edition so gonna just kind of mix some of them together in terms you know in some of the terms and and some of the concepts so one of the things I held over from the sixth edition was in in the uh I think this was originally Chapter 3 of the sixth edition when it talked about uh Clarity and uh clear and concise writing was uh you there were four things that we had to think about as writers and uh the first one is having a sense of uh Clarity or clearness uh that uh was defined as free from doubt or or for or confusion so you know is your writing uh free of doubt and is it is it is it saying what it's you know is it clearly stating and saying what you uh the message that it intends also conciseness uh expressing a lot with few words and being very succinct and and and the content that we're going to talk about after this will you know will also speak to a sense of conciseness so that's important also Precision preciseness is is um you know is your writing distinct and is it correct in its meaning so are you using uh the right words to convey your message and then last is parsimony uh which is explaining things in the most simplistic terms as possible that we don't get caught up in a lot of flashy 50 c words that we write uh you know simply so you know like I've said in other in other lectures that if uh something that you've written you uh really should you know anybody like let's say a freshman in in uh in in college or a senior in high school could pick up and and read and and know exactly what you're trying to say and um you know because it's it's simply written it's clear of any doubt uh it's concise and it's also precise so these are these are Concepts from the sixth edition and how they were how they were spelled out and uh and and fleshed out uh in terms of how we should think about writing and I wanted to keep them as a as an additional guide now the seventh edition uh talks about four qualities of writing and and a lot of these are have a lot of overlap with what you know the four that that we you know that I just went over continuity flow conciseness and Clarity and the way that the chapter breaks it up is they talk about continuity and flow first and then they move on and then there's Concepts that uh that will flush that out and describe what continuity and flow are and then uh they uh the authors go on uh to describe conness and Clarity together and and U have several Concepts beyond that so let's start with continuity and flow and and and the one thing I do like about the seventh edition is they do Define these Concepts very clearly uh which you know they should because this uh this is about Clarity and procision and all that so continuity is defined as the logical consistency of expression throughout a paper uh and flow is the rhythmic nature of words sentences and paragraphs throughout a paper uh so you know with continuity is your expression of thought clear is it consistent is it clear and it you know does it uh you know does it fall any tangents uh or you know is there discontinuity in the paper uh or or is it you know or is it in fact you know continuous and then flow you know and I've talked about flow in other in other lectures in terms of uh you know does your paper have flow in terms of moving from the the very uh broad to the specific and also does does one uh paragraph uh or actually one sentence you know transition into the next to the next to the next which transitions into the next paragraph Without these two concepts a paper will be uh severely disorganized and your message will get lost uh so how do we uh achieve continuity and flow is uh we're going to review some of these suggestions uh so for continuity we have to we have to stay consistent this is the I guess where the rubber meets the road uh staying consistent with your words uh and ideas throughout your paper so one example of uh of maybe continuity would be let's say you're writing a paper about counselors or counseling or Psychotherapy that you know that you would want to uh continually use the same term each time that you know you might use counseling or Psychotherapy you wouldn't use both because you know if if you use both the and you mean it in the same you know you mean them as synonyms the reader might not get that and they might say well what's the difference between counseling and Psychotherapy which we know there's a difference between counseling and Psychotherapy they're defined differently so you're going to want to use the word that best describes what you're writing about in your paper uh an example of idea continuity like look you don't want to be tan tangential uh you want to stay on on subject stay on

target so for example um you know you want to write about one idea at a time within your paragraph and and and the ideas should really flow together uh in in a sense so you know you might have a couple of ideas in a literature review that you need to cover and you want to cover maybe one at a time and you want to start broadly and you want to uh you and have your continuity of thought move you know to the more specific now transitional words are always good to use in the paper because it helps maintain continuity and flow of thought between or within the topics um you know so like you know transitional words could be just be you know pronoun use um in terms of Myers noted you know and then you in uh and then you would go on to describe what she noted and then in the next parag in the next sentence you might want to uh move on with using the pronoun she instead of Myers time links cause and effect links addition links I think we're going to get to that uh in in coming yeah right here and and please disregard the page number that was for the sixth edition but uh all of these links will help maintain a continuity of flow and thought within your paper and I I I i' encourage you to look at uh some of these uh time links uh in in terms of cause and effect addition links and contrast links I use the ones that I use you know I use thus therefore uh in addition uh I I try not to use also as much I use however and allthough and and also while and whereas from time to time but the thing is is that we need to use a combin combination of all these we don't want to use the same one over and over because it it'll bore the reader and it becomes redundant so think about you know which which uh you know which links you use and and think about how you might be able to um you know if you're using uh just one or two you know think about if you can you know adopt a couple more if if if you find yourself using a lot of these then hey you're you're good and just to be mindful of when you use them okay smoothness of expression you know this is being as clear as possible in your writing it's it's it's like met meta writing I I always think about um metacognition if you remember that term uh from from your undergrad undergradu uh well metacognition is when you're thinking about your thinking meta writing is something that I think maybe I made up I don't know uh it's it's thinking about uh what and how you're writing it it's it's uh you know it's looking at things extremely literal and and very uh uh you're paying uh a lot of attention to what you're writing and you're being mindful of it so some questions that you might want to ask yourself as you're revising a paper is does this first sentence connect to the second and and if it does in what way how does it connect and and how does the second sentence connect to the third sentence and how does the third sentence connect to the fourth sentence and let's say there's five sentences so how does the fourth connect to the fifth and how how did the first sentence the first second third and fourth get you to that fifth sentence and does it get you to that fifth sentence so this is a kind of a like a verbal walkthrough of a meta writing procedure you know how do things connect also check your paragraphs uh you know do does your first paragraph uh at the end of that paragraph uh logically take you to the beginning of the next paragraph and does and and by end of that paragraph has it take has it taken the reader to a place that makes logical sense that's um you know that's you know that that they're gonna that they're going to understand uh you know and make sure that you're transitioning from not just one paragraph to uh to another smoothly but you're transitioning from topic to topic smoothly make sure that it makes sense make sure you're not make sure you're just not writing like you know one topic and then okay we're gonna just completely uh uh you know shift gears and go on to this next topic and you know you have to you have to prepare the reader for that now one of the ways that uh that you can achieve smoothness of expression is we're also going to talk about this later is you know after you write you leave it you leave it alone for a while you go do something else you you you know you I don't know you walk the dog or you you know go play you know some you know some games or you know something that kind of gets your mind off what you're doing resets your brain uh and and and then you come back and then and then read it at a later time maybe even another day and then you you'll be able to to see you know did did this make sense and and if it does great but if not then then you got some revisions to do verb tense is always important and and we're g to uh talk about verb tense in a little bit actually I'm just going to kind of skip that for now uh but verb tense is important it is very important for smoothness of expression funneling and I've I've already alluded to this in this uh um uh in this lecture and I think I've described it in other lectures uh as part of this as well is that you know funneling is when you start out very broad describing an idea or a thought and and and over the course of the paragraph you become uh it be it gets more and more specific to you know the point you're trying to make now funing funneling should be done within a paragraph and it should also be done in an entire section of a lit review and it should be done within the lit review itself so if if you have um you know if you're writing a literature review that is um let's say you're you know where you you know it's part of an empirical study you know you have to review all the literature within all of the topics that you're going to be studying but at the very beginning of the literature you start out extremely Broad and by the end of the literature review it should be so specific to to what you want to do in your study and and the rational is to why uh that it and it makes and it should make complete sense so uh noun strings I think this is something new to the seventh edition I'm not sure if they ever uh described it in the sixth edition in this way but all this is is when you Place several nouns together to modify the the final noun so this is a so this is a noun string uh taken from the book culturally sensitive qualitative interview techniques that that's a lot of nouns right uh so really what want to do is you want to modify uh techniques but do you need all these nouns to do it probably not so uh the solution according to the book would be culturally sensitive techniques so you know you you've knocked out two of them culturally sensitive techniques for qualitative interviews uh so you know that's just a it's it's a better way of saying it uh this doesn't make a whole lot of sense by the time you get to techniques uh you know after reading all those uh those noun you know reading that noun string uh you might be a little confused as to to what was going on uh moving on with conciseness and Clarity uh is you know this is saying only what you need to say and this is really saying uh saying more with less you don't want to fill up your paper or your writing with words that you don't need because every word that somebody reads is is brain power that they're using using and and you want to use as little of the brain power of the reader as possible so they can get through your paper in in a very um efficient way so this is El eliminating the fluff now I know people love fluff they love just throwing everything into a paper and and bloating it out and saying oh I got my 20 pages in and and but you've said very little with 20 Pages I'd rather read an eight-page paper that says even more than a 20page paper and I'm not in a bad mood after reading the 20page paper because it said very little and I'm I'm actually in a better mood after uh reading an eight-page paper because I'm still I'm not tired yet I'm still refreshed I'm still hey I can maybe read another couple of few papers so so Clarity and precision uh will provide the most accurate and transparent writing uh for the reader so be clear in what you say and be and be precise in the words that you use and we're going to we're going to move forward with uh you know what some of that what some of this is this is just the introduction part short words and shorter sentences are going to be easier to comprehend not that I'm advocating for every sentence in your in your paper to be short because you need to mix it up you need to have short sentences long sentences uh midlength sentences you got to be deliberate in your word choices be purposeful and mindful uh to to what words you uh you use in your paper and also be consistent with them so you you know you have to be deliberate from the get-go from you know from the beginning and then be consistent throughout okay so let's talk about uh all of this let's talk about wordiness and redundancy wordiness is defined as using more words than necessary you want to you want to prevent that uh one example would be you know at the present time like if if you were saying like sentence of you know at the present time very little research exists uh within these variables Within These people uh or you could just say currently currently very little research has been conducted on these variables with these with these specific people so you want to you know after you write your your original draft you want to start chopping words that don't need to be there and uh and condensing words like you know if you can if you can if you can write if you can use one word like currently in the place of four words uh then that that's that's a great thing all right redundancy this is using multiple words with the same meaning so you know one example is I think the book gives is we're exactly the same like the participants were exactly the same versus the participants were the same uh you know you don't need exactly the same you know exactly is a is a word that it it just it's redundant and and uh and once again just takes time and energy from the reader now the thing is is when you write your first draft most people will will write that draft and and not um yeah they're just you know they're going to be you you're not you're not g to get you're not going to see this you're not gonna because it's your thoughts coming out on paper and and and it's not until you get to revisions and I would say multiple revisions that you're going to start seeing uh the nuances and the the the you know the um the details and be able to pull out the redundancy and the wordiness and and and and that's what makes a paper good is are the revisions sentence and paragraph length like I like I've said uh in other in other lectures you got to vary your sentence uh length you got to have short long and medium sentences uh uh you know and and and then also you just have to like find a rhythm and and and go with it and and I I have a lection or a lecture on Rhythm that you know describes what it is and how you can how you can find your Rhythm uh using a graph so I would I would recommend that now apa's changed a bit in terms of having minimum and maximum sentences uh and and paragraph lengths uh they they didn't really speak about sentence lengths before they always talked about they always in the sixth edition they prohibited the use of a one sentence paragraph and now they've changed it so now uh now it's that you you have no minimum or maximum sentence or paragraph length however you know it it's not it's not advisable to have a one sentence paragraph length unless you can unless it's Justified so this isn't something that NE you would use you know in in you know throughout your paper that you know that you want at least I would say three uh you know three to three to six paragra or three to set three to six sentences within a paragraph uh that you know then and and you know then they're going to vary in length so and and then you have to find logical uh breaks between paragraphs that you do not want you know I would never have an entire page uh without a paragraph break and sometimes I've seen people go two three four pages without a a paragraph break and the thing is is you got to come up for err at some point and and that's what paragraphs do is they provide uh the reader with a break a literal break that they can stop at that paragraph and and and think about what they read or go get something to drink or you know whatever that it's a it's it's a place where they can stop and and do whatever they need to do to uh so they can so they can keep uh reading so I would say you know two paragraphs three paragraphs on a page is is is probably going to be more the ideal so tone you got to watch your tone sometimes sometimes you know people are real passionate about what they're um what they're writing about and uh you know they uh you know sometimes they can get a little bit combative or accusatory depending on you know what they're writing and how they feel about it and the thing is is we can't do that uh you know we need to remain professional our tone has to be very formal but also very straightforward and and clear so that's just something to think about uh precision and Clarity with uh U you know making uh making every making certain and and once again I'm sorry that I I left this citation in here it's an old citation this is making certain that every word means exactly what you intended to mean think about your words think about your your nouns think about your verbs for example uh this uh uh you know this example uh you know you have to think about it in the most very literal sense so if you're saying if you're if you're uh paraphrasing something by Johnson in '92 you know do you say that Johnson felt something you know Johnson felt you know yada yada so on and so forth how do you know what he felt we don't know what he felt we don't know the internal mechanisms of his of his mind and his brain and his feelings but we do know that he noted something in 1992 and that's better you could say Johnson described he noted he um reported something you know that that's more I would say behavioral and less emotional or or you know cognitive innocence colloquial Expressions approximations we don't really use these uh you know especially like with approximations that if you're reading a scientific study and and they would U describe as most of the participants uh you know let's say completed the survey well how many are most you know if if you know you have to put the exact number participants which is an N of 235 we don't know what most are uh or what what what it is so also with jargon you want to keep it to a minimum now there are uh you know there are times that you do have to use jargon uh but at the same time there's going to be people outside of our profession and our in our field of study that might not understand psychological jargon uh that might not get get the terms and we and we don't want to use them unless we have to now there will be jargon that you might introduce into the uh into into the paper so if there are special terms define them uh and it's it's always a good idea to operationally Define terms and constructs that you're going to use throughout the paper so uh seriation now this is something from uh the sixth edition that uh I think is good uh for to get a sense of conciseness and clarity uh uh because well I mean it's it just arranges the content uh in a very systematic way and I'm not sure I I couldn't find it in the seventh edition I'm not sure if this is going to be an appropriate carryover to the seventh edition but I'm going to at least cover it and if somebody tells you it's not seventh edition then you can come yell at me um really what this is it's an arrangement of content uh within sections paragraphs or sentences and it helps to keeps things structured and uh for the reader So within a paragraph you're you're allowed to use bullets or numbering and and I think the seventh edition does talk about bullets and numbering that I might describe in another in another lecture but bullets and numbering is very much allowed now if you have to decipher you know bullets versus numbering which is you know which is the more appropriate if if you if you have a list that of of things that you need to um uh you know use bullets or numbering is you know is is put them in bullets where they're all really the same uh appropriate or if is numbering appropriate because numbering might distinguish some kind of a an ordering fashion like first place second place third place uh or you know or are they just listed really in in the same in the same level so that's something you have to consider when using them I wouldn't use a lot of these because it can be very choppy to the paper within a sentence you could always seriate with within the sentence and and that's when you use lowercase letters of parentheses so if the example is our goals were to a increase student wellness comma B increase faculty wellness and C incre increase or influence the understanding of counselor identity if those are three things uh that you you know that that you that you need to list you could certainly seriate that and you seriate with letters and they're in full parentheses and you have to have at least least three things that you need to serate you can't seriate two you can't just use a and b you have to use a b c and then anything beyond that uh I once again I would be mindful of of when and how you seriate don't do this in every paragraph it gets choppy this is only for the most important of content that you have for a paper and once again consult with the seventh edition I can't find seriation in the seventh edition so they might have cut this out or prohibited it I can't imagine that they have uh but just uh just double check before you use it all right anthropomorphism this is attributing human characteristics to non-human objects a lot of people do this in their writing they don't even know it uh and and there's times that you don't want to do this and there's times uh now according to the seventh edition that you that you can do this so uh one example uh that that you can't uh that that I would probably uh move away from is um is when you uh uh anthropomorphize uh an institution so the National Institute of Mental Health reported that well that might be wrong because institutions uh don't report anything uh it's an institution uh people report things this experiment argues well wrong experiments can't argue anything many researchers demonstrated and then it goes on to describe something that's right because researchers are people who can demonstrate things same with indiv idual like also Sterns noted how you know that's right because Sterns is a person who can note things so think about you know think about how you uh you know how you attribute human characteristics within your within your writing now some things you can get away with ACC according to the seventh edition I'm not so sure if I agree with this but you can this is APA appropriate so uh writing is subjective anyway so it's you know I'm just telling you what APA say so when you describe content of different sections of the paper you can say things like this section addresses you know so on and so forth or this chapter focuses upon you know so on and so forth or even describing the results of a paper uh you know the results suggest the data provide the research contributes the study found so uh you know those are things that are that are still appropriate I think it's anthropomorphizing but I think APA is um you know letting up on some of this uh so for precision and Clarity uh um you know there's pronouns and uh that that can be used for your right I think we we we already talked about this actually I think we did uh also attribution this is relating a person or thing to someone or something else so uh the the the the one uh the one form of attribution I want to cover there's actually two forms is the third person mistake writing about ourselves in the third person now this is a carryover from the sixth edition and I'm pretty sure the seventh edition is the same uh uh so so I think we're good here uh the writing about ourselves yeah in third person the authors of the study uh of this current study no if you're the author and you're talking about yourself you're allowed to use personal pronouns when referring to yourself in apa and I know that there's a there's a a lot of uh controversy or people thinking that this is inappropriate but it's very appropriate you are allowed to use I or we when referring to yourself uh in apa Cy so you know our goals for this study are as follows that is correct I constructed a four-dimensional cube model so if if you're talking about what you're doing or what you're proposing or what you're studying in a study then use I uh don't use passive voice and don't use and don't refer to yourself as the author you know we hypothesized that children in an intervention group would have lower you know you know so on and so forth this could be used in the discussion that you did you hypothesized that so you're allowed to say we or I okay editorial we this is a form of we that you don't really want to use uh this you uh you only use the pronoun we when referring to yourself and your co-authors or you use if it's just you you don't use we in any kind of General broad sense uh you know it's that it's vague that who we really is so uh let's say you know what this is a this is a poor example a bad example we often treat people who suffer from depression well who is we is that counselors psychologists Physicians clergy you like who who are that who who who is we but uh Mental Health Counselors clinical Mental Health Counselors or school counselors often treat people who suffer from depression that's correct um so think about uh your use of editorial we when you write there's also this is something new to the seventh edition too is singular they and you use singular they to refer to a person who who number one uh uses they as their personal pronoun uh or they uh you can also use uh uh for a generic third person uh if a person's gender is unknown so if you're referring to an author and you're not sure of their uh you know uh you know if their what their gender is uh then then you can certainly uh use they and it's not just they it's it's they them they you know their theirs uh themselves uh and and this is supposed to read them themselves I think the auto correct uh when I typed that in uh autoc corrected it so it should it should read thems uh don't use he or she alone as a generic third person pronoun so you you always want to use uh that linguistic devices just going to get into this very very quickly uh linguistic devices attracts attention to words or the word sounds and it diverts attention away from ideas so you don't want to use word sounds you don't want to use alliteration you don't want to use cliché rhyming poetry you know this isn't really scientific writing you want to stay away from that also contractions a lot of people still use contractions in their writing uh so here's what here's what to do you know don't or do not use them you know so so it's kind of a kind of fun thing to do you would never use don't won't uh weren't whatever you you know you you uh you always spell out the words do not uh cannot will not instead of won't things like like that okay now we're going to get a little bit into uh grammar well I know we've got into grammar a little bit in other uh in other lectures so I'm not going to focus too much on this I will say this uh about verbs uh you know you can use active and passive voice in conjunction with one another there has to be a balance there has to be a ratio um you know that uh that we like you know like one example is we administer the survey to the students versus the survey was administered to the Ser to the students uh so you know that that active voice is going to be uh the preferred voice to use uh uh also you know that the authors presented the results uh using tables versus the results were presented by the authors using tables you know always go for the active voice and and there's a lot more people out there that are pushing for active voice especially if you write for publication that want to see active voice and I know with all my writing uh I I try to use more active than passive I use passive to throw in there at times for nuance and texture uh you know my um I I would say that my ratio is about 70% active and and uh and about 30% of the most passive uh tensing verbs okay so we're going to get into past tense verb usage you that that you would um past tense you would use past tense when describing an action that occurred at a specific time so if you knew that benser and West presented specific findings in 2008 you would you know that you would use uh past tense verb usage uh and you wouldn't use present perfect verb usage so you would just say very simply buzer and West presented similar findings now present perfect is when is is is when you describe an action that didn't occur a specific time that you can't uh specifically put your finger on and say exactly on that happened so you know one example is you can say since that finding occurred counselors have used this type of treatment well okay we know that counselors have used that type of treatment past uh so but we just don't know when specifically so that's when you would use uh present perfect now the thing is is that you know APA talks about this is you know this is the strict rules on how to use uh you know the the tensing of verbs I would recommend using past tense more often because it it you know it um reduces the use of verbs of being and it reduces the uh uh the length of your

sentences uh subject and verb agreements uh you know this is a verb must agree in in number with subjects so uh you know the participants completed their research packets within 20 minutes minutes so you know okay um pronouns you know I'm G to leave some of the pronoun usages up to you modifiers a lot of this is you know just basic grammar that you know I think it's important to go over modifiers can modify a word or a phrase like an adjective or an adverb you place the modifier as closely as possible to the word or phrase that intends to modify so uh the word only this is one that I I pull out because you know I'm kind of a stickler for the word only um so you want to place it as close as possible to the modified word so the right way uh uh is is the researchers used only a comparative design versus the researchers only used a comparative design so if you if you read these two sentences they kind of say different things so you know this one is saying that they only used comparative design okay well that's all they used but this one kind of intends that the researchers only use a comparative design they could have used more that's they're implying that the sentence is implying that you could use more than a comparative design if they wanted to and and we're kind of disappointed that they didn't use more so you have to you know and you have to be very uh once again be very literal about how you uh about how your sentences are structured adverbs uh you know this is used uh adverbs are used to modify verbs and adjectives to enhance the quality of the understanding I like using introduction introductory and transitional words uh you know adverbs like you know first second third fourth uh that you know that uh that also helps to um keep things clear and consistent other adverbs you can use you know are there's a there's you know there's there's a lot of them so I I would use adverbs somewhat sparingly in scientific writing only when you you really need to strategies to improve your writing uh you know I think I've touched upon some of these in other lectures but uh but but APA likes to you know throw in some of these as well so I I just covered what was in the in the man or the book uh reading uh just to learn from example as you read other people's manuscripts and books that you're going to get a sense of how they write and you might be able to uh you know replicate that to some extent you know replicate the writing style and and what you know how they say things how they structure sentences uh I I like writing from an outline this outline also can be how you would arrange your headings so uh I've said before that you know that the more detailed your outline is for a paper the easier it is to write that's me that might not be for you so you know writing the writing process is somewhat subjective uh sometimes you want to write then you want to leave it alone and then come back and see if it makes any sense sometimes it will sometimes it won't having other people read uh your manuscript or your paper and then also revision revision is the key just revise revise revise and if you know if you're writing something for for publication if you have to revise it 20 or 30 times that that is a decent amount of times to to revise a manuscript so okay and and you know and these strategies are all going to be used in different ways different degrees different combinations depends it just B you know just kind of depends on how you do things so all right that's the conclusion for chapter 4 if you have any questions about anything please let me know if not have a good day