hello and welcome to the uh apa style uh lecture on uh chapter six of the manual titled mechanics of style so let's let's jump right in and i've taken uh the information specifically from i i think the apa seventh edition there might be a couple of things i love from the sixth edition uh but uh primarily this is from the seventh edition okay so this chapter goes into uh some of the uh the nuts and bolts and specifics of how to use punctuation correctly uh in apa style writing now a lot of this is going to be um you know contribute to the the use of of grammar proper grammar and uh it's it's going to help you become a better writer it also you know i like to think of this as you know when i think about you know rhythm and flow and and and and writing philosophy that you know that we're trying to create something that you know that is um that is a really good read that's concise and precise and simplistic these are the the the the the bits or the let's say the notes in a mu the notes in a song that can actually you know that you're going to use to to create a sense of flow and create a sense of funneling and and and rhythm within your writing so you know this is this is these are the tools you have to work with so and we're going to get into all of these uh and then maybe some things at the end after that so the uh this is uh going to be somewhat of a i don't know maybe uh somewhat of a lecture in length uh and also let me all uh say that i'm not going over every i have not scoured this chapter and put everything in the chapter into this lecture i've probably gone over about 75 to 80 percent of it so if um you know that i think this is a good this lecture is a good supplement to actually reading the chapter yourself so uh to get you know to get the full uh just of of what they want but i i think i'm covering the main points now the first punctuation we're going to talk about is is proper use of spacing uh for apa seventh edition uh that uh they want one space after the following uh in in in your writing uh at the end of a sentence regardless of what the of what punctuation mark is used so what this means is between sentences there should be one space between sentences not two spaces uh they want one uh for also they want a space at one space after a comet the the use of commas colons and semicolons they want one space after the use of periods within a reference and name initials that's something that i think people forget about and so make sure that you put a space between uh within a reference you know and the name initials so uh you know when you put somebody's name like let's say foster comma uh space t period and then you would put us and then you would put a comma and then a space uh before you put the next author or if you don't put the comma that you would put a space between the um between the period and and the parentheses for the date uh hope that made sense it's it's um without a visual also they want periods uh one space between periods that separate parts of a reference list uh no spaces after the following so after internal uh periods uh in abbreviations like if you know if you do the eg or ie that you don't put a space between the periods that it's e uh e period g period comma and then a space uh and then a period m period no you know and no spaces between uh any of that also around colons uh um uh in ratios so you know that 12 uh 12 to 1 ratio that it would be it would be 12 you know one two colon one no spaces between that

uh use a period uh uh we're getting into periods now moving on to periods use a period to come uh to end a complete sentence also with initials in names so if um in which uh that this is not uh properly uh i i've got some stuff in here that doesn't uh that shouldn't be here just uh uh i i would uh pretend like this parentheses right here doesn't exist so uh you know if it's foster comma t period uh and then a period after uh the 2020. also abbreviations for uh for the united states you know that if you're going to abbreviate the united states to be uh the u.s uh u.s is uh you know you use periods also uh latin abbreviations like am i.e versus et cetera things like that that you would use periods you don't use a period for state abbreviations so when you use new york or florida or vermont or california or whatever states for um uh you know let's say when you do references like you reference a book and you reference the publisher and the um you know the place it was published you would not use periods uh to delineate state abbreviations also uh capitalized abbreviations like aca iq you would not academic degrees now i have a real problem with this because apa talks about how you don't use periods in academic degrees but i don't agree with that because uh you've all you always use periods in academic degrees now this isn't going to be a big thing you know in terms of i think a class or anything but uh that you know this is the proper way to delineate a phd abbreviation that it's capital p h period space capital d period uh and but apa prefers it to be just phd uh as that so i'm just telling you both ways of doing uh also you don't use a period after referencing a doi and the reason why you don't do that is because uh it can mess up the link to the the article that the doi is uh wanting to send to you so don't use a period after that i know it feels like you should use a period after that but uh they don't want you to okay comma usage uh you can use commas for the following uh within a sentence between elements of three or more so when you need to list something within a sentence like uh um like like right here we looked at how depression comma anxiety comma and phobias and then go on with the sentence that you would want to um uh use a comma between the elements of three or more now if it was we you know if it was just we looked at depression and anxiety you wouldn't need a comma you would just use the word you know which conjunction uh also the oxford comma is required in apa writing now you might be asking yourself what's the oxford comma this little thing this little comma right here is the oxford comma so when you uh when you would write we looked at how depression comma anxiety comma and phobias and then it would go on sentence this the last comma that would you you would use when um uh what you know when using elements of three or more is the oxford comma and it is required so uh be sure to include that also you you can use commas uh with uh with non-essential clauses so uh the example here is the authors comma who are from canada comma ran the study so you know this is a non-essential clause in the sentence but it you know it adds a little bit of description to the sentence and you would want to delineate that you know with the use of commas on both sides also you can use commas to separate two independent clauses uh so the example is you know two and an empty clause is just a complete sentence so you would uh write the participants in group one were given the placebo comma and then you would add the second independent clause which is while participants in group two were given the treatment now you know the nice thing about so we're starting to see how you can use uh and structure sentences uh differently uh with the use of different punctuations you could have two complete sentences here you know you could have two you know one sentence that's uh separating the two independent clauses with a comma uh and as we go on you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna be able to see how you can use other uh punctuations to to achieve the same goal really what what what you're doing here is you're going to have a lot of options on how you can write now you don't want to use the same formula over and over and over again you want to mix it up a little bit that it's going to add texture to your writing and also help maybe with your rhythm so okay so let's move on with commas um you use commas um after an introductionary phrase so you know the introduction or phrase uh of a sentence could be you know after the uh after the therapist administered the instrument comma and then you would go on with the rest of the sentence uh describing exact dates may 4th comma 1970 comma was the date of the kent state shooting so you could use commas in that also using commas commas and references and citations uh please be sure to do that one one comma that i i see a lot of people miss when they uh cite a rough uh when they cite a study is uh you know that they'll put kelly and crass but they'll forget the comma between the last uh uh uh the last name uh in the citation and the in the date so there has to be a comma that delineates or you know that's between them okay let's move on to semicolon use use uh you can use semicolons for the following uh you know once again to separate an independent clause not joined by a conjunction so it's you can use a semicolon in the same way that you can use a colon in this instance there's two independent clauses and you can separate them either with a comma or a semicolon once again i wouldn't use a semicolon every time that you want to separate two independent clauses but you can i would say once in a while i would use a comma more often than a semicolon but once again that's just my writing style coming out also you can use a comma to separate elements in a series uh that are already uh using commas uh in in you know in or in multiple print uh parenthetical uh uh uh citations so if you know so if uh so for multiple parenthetical citations you'd have sevicus miller and barnes 2007. if you have another citation you need to use or you need to include you would separate those citations with a semicolon so uh you can uh use a semicolon to separate two independent clauses joined by a conjunctive verb so uh you know all this is is you know if you know the conjunctive adverb is um is is the word however so if you had a sentence the intervention group had many successes semicolon however comma there were many challenges so that is a proper use of semicolon according to apa

okay moving on to colon usage colon usage you can use colons between an independent introductory clause and a clause that extends the previous class so here's an example of that so let's say you know the first part of this sentence first of all has to be independent and it introduces a larger thought within within the sentence to come we found two associations with depression colon uh a negative association with both happiness and income so uh so you know so that's a proper use of a colon you can also use it in this way we found two associations once again it's an independent clause and uh and then it would be a colon and then you would uh and then you would say depression was negatively associated with happiness and income so yeah and and the thing is is that uh if you see a difference here between uh you know why is the word uh uh not capitalized the first word uh not capitalized after this colon uh and then uh um and the depression is capitalized after the second colon is because depression this this second example has two independent clauses that are that are coming together so we found two associations is an independent clause that is a complete sentence and then colon depression was negatively associated with happiness and income that is another independent clause now if if this is not if the second if the second part of the sentence is not an independent clause you do not want to capitalize the first letter because then then you're creating a sentence fragment but if you if you if you don't capitalize it that means it's an extension of the first part of the sentence i hope that makes sense okay let's move on to dashes dashes aren't really used all that much uh in in in apa i don't think they encourage it too much there's two types and i think this is a new addition to the seventh uh or this is in addition to uh the seventh edition there's the m dash and this is uh the longer type of dash that that you might be familiar with and you would only use uh um you know you only use this in a sudden interruption within a sentence so you know this is almost like a a comma usage but it's a different way of uh you know of breaking up a sentence so the example is these two participants dash one from the first group and one from the second dash were tested separately now you could also use a comma you know you could you could put this as these two participants comma one from the first group and one from the second comma or tested separately i think that would work as well so you have some options here how you want how you want to break up the sounds uh so yeah you want to use these somewhat sparingly you know i i i agree with this is something that apa uh cautions us on it it does interrupt the flow of of one's writing it can be choppy and it can it just it's somewhat it messes up the rhythm of your writing uh so you want to use this only uh maybe once in a while like you maybe use this once or maybe even twice within a manuscript of you know 25 pages you know if you use it at all so uh the second type of dash is the end dash this is the the shorter dash and this is this is when you would use it for you know page ranges for uh delineating uh you put a dash between you know 20 to 60 percent but you might actually use the word two twenty twenty two sixty percent or you use a dash twenty to 60 also if you if you needed to like delineate two words like the nashville tampa flight things like that that that you would use the shorter dash for okay let's move on to quotation marks uh you use double quotation marks when you directly quote a source so and also the periods and commas all go uh inside the quotations so i don't have an example of this but when you when you quote a source

then you know that you would quote the entire source you know is you know including the punctuation uh that would all go in within the quotation marks that's a common mistake for people to uh um put the quotation before the period you want the period and then the quotation uh you can also use double quotation marks when you introduce a word or phrase as ironic as an ironic comment slang or word or phrase that you have invented you know i see a lot of people use these you know uh you know in in terms of introducing irony or or slang once again you don't want to use quotation marks a lot it's only when you absolutely need to because if you're using them all the time paragraph paragraph it's really distracting for the reader and it doesn't present it's good writing uh if uh you also can use or want to use quotation marks when you mention a title of a book chapter or article within the text now once again this is something that is very rare to do and i and i see i see this quite a bit you know within uh you know within students writing that that you want to include the book chapter or the article title and it just and they do this paragraph paragraph and it's just it's just not good writing so only only when it really makes only when there's a real need to uh uh you know to mention the title of a book uh within your writing and you got i think you gotta have some justification for it so but but i wouldn't do that very much uh also when reproducing material from a test item or instructions is you can use uh double quotation marks uh something that i couldn't quite find in the seventh edition yet as i'm reading through it is using uh double versus single quotation marks this is taken from the sixth edition i can't imagine it would be any different in the seventh but just just i'm just kind of you know just noting this is that you use single quotation marks only within double quotation marks so if you're quoting something that quotes something within it you want to use double quotation marks on the outside for the entire quote and then single quotation marks within the quote that you're using double quotation marks okay and then block quotes uh this is uh i'm just talking about block codes very uh very quickly right now i think i think that's going to come up in other lectures as well block quotes you use only a block quote when it has 40 or more words you don't put this in quotes you indent the entire quote when you block quote and um you uh you you can reference the quote before or after the blog but always put the page number that you found the the quote from after the quote uh you know and and and um you know you would leave the page number out of the quote uh as well uh so but but here's the thing on quoting and before i get into parentheses when you write i i think it's much better that you not quote other people's work there's only there's only two times that i like to see people quoting in in their papers or their manuscripts number one is when you are operationally defining a construct or a variable because it's it's it's always good to just quote the definition of that variable and cite it so people know exactly how you are defining that variable if you paraphrase a definition like that it can be somewhat misleading people might misunderstand and they might think well you know and they might not get the definition of of your variable the second time that you would quote is when an author of an article or a book says something that's so eloquent and so so they say something they write something so well it's it's virtually impossible to paraphrase that now and and i would say that this that 99.99 of the time that second argument would not hold water because i think that i think that most things if not maybe uh you know virtually all things can be paraphrased so to me when people use excessive quoting within their papers or their manuscripts what they're doing is they're allowing other people's voice to come in on their paper and and i would like to hear your voice come out through your manuscript or your paper so because the thing is is you know you have your voice on how you write and when you bring other people's quotes in to your writing it it it feels different it has a different rhythm it has a different flow it has a different makeup and and it's just not good it's not good to combine two forms of writing that way i would rather you tell the story from your voice and you paraphrase other people's thoughts their writings their findings you know what whatever you need to bring in that's that's other people's works bring it in under your voice and cite them for that work so all right get off my soapbox about quoting and we can move on to parentheses parentheses some common usages of parentheses is uh first to set off a structurally independent uh uh elements so uh so the first one is let's say i was gonna i'm introducing the wellness cube model uh in a sentence and then i'd wanna in parentheses say you know see figure four you know just to tell the reader where they can find it you know where they can find that that visual depiction of it you also use parentheses uh within a reference citations within texts so if i was uh you know gonna cite myers and sweeney in 99 uh that you know that i would at the end of a sentence that i would um i would cite them uh um you know at the end of the sentence or in the middle of the sentence uh you know wherever it's most appropriate but i would cite them in parentheses also when introducing abbreviations it's appropriate to use parentheses so uh the first time i would introduce a construct like the wellness cube model and i wasn't going to call it the welding's cube model throughout the uh throughout the paper i was just going to call it the wcm i would uh enter the first time i would spell it out and then i would follow it up with the abbreviation in parentheses and then from there on out i would use wcm also to set off letters that identify items in a series within a sense this is when you seriate and uh when you seriate uh you know that you use uh this is what it would look like the dimensions within the wcm include a in parentheses both it's it's completely encapsulated in parentheses a the walnuts dimension comma b encapsulated in parentheses the didactic dimension and then c and then d and and just as a note when you seriate you have to have at least three constructs to celebrate syria if you if you've only got two then don't seriate uh brackets uh the most common usage of bracketing is to include uh or to enclose parenthetical material that is already in parentheses so what this does is it keeps uh what what is encapsulated in parentheses clear in terms of um the level of parent uh parenthetical use so if this entire uh uh not i guess sentence is in parentheses the results for the treatment group are presented in figure seven and you wanted to include uh the number of people in the treatment group you would bracket n equals 100 within the parentheses sounds pretty easy also uh if you put in parentheses the bec depression inventory and then you wanted to abbreviate it uh for the first time then uh you would use the brackets within that and really you know there's i think there might be a couple other reasons why you use brackets but this is the most common usage and once again you know i think the book goes into a little more detail about all of these uh uses of punctuation that i'm going over but i i'm going over i'm at least reviewing what you're going to use most often so all right capitalization you capitalize uh words when it's the first word of a complete sentence you capitalize the first word after a colon that begins a complete sentence we already had the conversation earlier in the lecture uh major works in titles of books and articles within the body of a paper you would capitalize if if you are in fact uh you mean uh you know including the title of a book or article within your paper uh major works in your headings and subheadings or major words i'm sorry in your headings and subheadings proper nouns such as names countries subscale names names of universities and also classes if they're specifically mentioned you don't capitalize for diseases or disorders so disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder major depressive disorder borderline personality disorder you do not capitalize in your paper also therapies and treatments you do not capitalize for so if you spell out cognitive behavioral therapy within your paper you do not capitalize that apa does not want you to do that

theories concepts uh hypotheses principles models statistical procedures you don't want to um you know you don't want to capitalize for that either now if let's say you capitalize only if a name appears so alzheimer's type dementia alzheimer's that's a name freudian theory is a name adlerian theory is a name so you're able to you would be able to capitalize lyria and freudian alzheimer's but if it's just let's say narrative theory narrative therapy solution focus theory solution-focused therapy it's it's all uh you don't capitalize

you can capitalize for titles of instruments like the bet depression inventory uh mmpi depression scale things like that um nouns following by numeral followed by numerals or letters like see table three table is capitalized on day nine day is capitalized figure four figure is capitalized all right let's move into italics and once again there's also some things related to capitalization that i've gone over so read the book see what else uh you know see what other nuances and idiosyncrasies might exist that you might want to know about okay italics uh we italicize for words when we want to introduce a new technical or key term for the first time within a paper so let's say you're you're writing a paper about let's say wellness and you use wellness for the first time within your paper that you would want to italicize the word uh wellness when you introduce it for the first time when you know for the you know for the first time in your paper so that way uh you know that you know that says okay well this is a key term that we need to pay attention to now you only italian says it once and then you move on so um anchors for a scale i don't know if you'll if you'll need that but if if you're uh introducing a psychometric scale of some kind and you're talking about let's say the um uh you know the the likert uh you know the likert anchors that you you would want to italicize them titles for books journals and volume numbers when referencing and referencing section and we'll get to this when we get to the reference but uh this is just an example that if you let's say you um referenced an article from the clinical gerontologist that you would italicize the journal name and also the volume number in your reference okay abbreviations um you want to use abbreviations pretty sparingly because if you use if the overuse of abbreviations can be very distracting to the reader you only want to use abbreviations for long technical terms and and also for terms that are just known to have abbreviations um uh it's you know and this is meant to save space overall because when you write for publication if you can get away with uh you're writing something uh as short as the mmpi two versus spelling the whole thing out every time you write you mention it that's good you know that's gonna save paper so so you know mmpi uh the bet depression or the back anxiety or depression inventories those are abbreviated quite a bit um so you only want to spell out um the uh the the full name of the instrument or whatever you're abbreviating for the first time and then you abbreviate it in parentheses right after that like this and then from there on out you would just use the abbreviation and and you don't put it in parentheses every time it's just that one time you use the parentheses all right moving on to numbers the the general usage for numbers is uh you you would you would express numbers as as numerals when the numbers are 10 and above uh so for example example exactly half of the 100 participants you know 100 is above 10 so of course you would express that as a numeral expressed in words number zero to nine so in this uh in this example during the treatment comma nine spelled out as a word of the 56 participants you know 56 is spelled out in a numeral form because it's above it's above 10 or it's 10 or above also you'd want to express a word uh a number in words when uh it begins a sentence so if if if the beginning of the sentence was 10 of the group completed the test you would spell out ten percent you know that you would use that as a word you know as a word in non-numeral also with common fractions uh ralph reported that two-thirds of her sample you know that uh two-thirds would be uh spelled out words and not its numerals all right and uh for the next part uh the the chapter goes into statistical abbreviations and symbols there's many of them i don't think it's necessarily helpful to um to go into those in a lecture uh because there's so many of them and you know that's just easier to use as a reference guide but i would refer you to page 183 in uh in the seventh edition of apa for that review all right well that does it for chapter six the mechanics of style i hope this has been helpful for you if you have any questions please contact me if not have yourself a good day