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 This book is out of print and no longer for sale. However, a sixth edition is available.

Concise Rules of APA Style offers essential writing and formatting standards for students, teachers, researchers, and clinicians in the social and behavioral sciences.

This easy-to-use pocket guide, compiled from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, provides complete guidance on the rules of style that are critical for clear communication. Readers will learn how to avoid the grammatical errors most commonly reported by journal editors; how to choose the appropriate format for statistics, figures, and tables; how to credit sources and avoid charges of plagiarism; and how to construct a reference list through a wide variety of examples and sources.

How does Concise Rules differ from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association? The Publication Manual remains the best source for broad background information about scientific publishing. It provides guidance on designing research, identifying the parts of a scholarly article, understanding the process of journal publication, and submitting articles for publication. Concise Rules, by comparison, targets only those rules writers need for choosing the best words and format for their articles. It offers a comprehensive list of essential writing standards in a convenient, easily retrievable format.

In addition to guidance on grammar points that have challenged writers in the social sciences, Concise Rules provides suggestions for reducing bias in language; reviews the mechanics of style for punctuation, spelling, capitalization, abbreviation, italicization, headings, and quotations; examines the preferred use of numbers as well as standards for metrication and statistics; provides guidance for the construction and formatting of tables, figures, and appendixes; and offers clear examples and models for referencing ideas and constructing error-free reference lists.

Available in a light-weight, spiral-bound format, Concise Rules will travel easily from home to school to office. It will be an invaluable reference tool for all social science scholars who are serious about communicating clearly and effectively.

Introduction: A Pocket Reference for Writers

1. Concise and Bias-Free Writing
2. Punctuation, Spelling, and Capitalization
3. Italicizing and Abbreviating
4. Numbers, Metrication, and Statistics
5. Tables
6. Figures
7. Footnotes and Appendixes
8. Quotations, Reference Citations in Text, and Reference List
9. Reference Examples

References

Appendix A: Style Rules Cross-Referenced to the Fifth Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Appendix B: Checklist for Manuscript Submission

Index