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APA style (also known as APA format) is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences , including sociology, education, nursing, criminal justice, anthropology, and psychology.
A document may also be considered to be divided into sections by its headings and subheadings, which may be used for a table of contents. For example, the hierarchical sections used in Wikipedia can be compiled into a table of contents for an article. Many books, however, only have chapter headings in the table of contents. [citation needed]
In common practice, lower levels yet are usually Arabic numerals and lowercase letters again, and sometimes lower-case Roman again, with single parentheses – 1) a) i) – but usage varies. MLA style is sometimes incorrectly referred to as APA style, [10] but the APA Publication Manual does not address outline formatting at all.
While citations should aim to provide the information listed above, Wikipedia does not have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style. A number of citation styles exist, including those described in the Wikipedia articles for Citation , APA style , ASA style , MLA style , The Chicago Manual ...
A quotation is not a facsimile and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text [m] should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These ...
Exclamation points (!) should usually only be used in direct quotes and titles of creative works. Bold type is reserved for certain uses. Quotation marks for emphasis of a single word or phrase are incorrect, and "scare quotes" are discouraged. Quotation marks are to show that you are using the correct word as quoted from the original source.
In contrast, the software is currently quite sufficient to support the parenthetical author-date format (Harvard style) suggested above. Many of today's style guides forbid or deprecate footnotes and reference endnotes when used simply to cite sources (Concordia Libraries). The APA style does not use footnotes to cite sources.
Quotations embody the breezy, emotive style common in fiction and some journalism, which is generally not suited to encyclopedic writing. Long quotations crowd the actual article and distract attention from other information. Many direct quotations can be minimized in length by providing an appropriate context in the surrounding text.