Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition

Media:	Paperback
Author:	American Psychological Association
Publisher:	American Psychological Association (APA)
Release date:	01 June, 2001
Our price:	$26.95

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition

Average rating:

Boring but Required

The "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association" is one those boring but necessary books that eventually will be on your shelf whether you like it or not. It is on mine.

Those of us who make a living by combining words into sentences acquiesce to collecting various style manuals. You know the list: MLA, Chicago, APA, and for those with a journalistic or marketing bent, the AP. The social services, many teaching journals (not all), and of course, most psychological journals require using the APA style for white papers, essays and the like.

Style formats make life easier on the editors you write for, and the APA does that job precisely.

I fully recommend "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association," not because it will make you smile like a Judy Collins novel, but because academic journals editors will smile with a satisfied look while reading your writing.

Anthony Trendl

not much of an improvement over the last edition

The only major improvement that I appreciated was that the new edition is spiral-bound. This alone makes it much more user-friendly than the last edition. However, in terms of content, there were very few improvements. The change to hanging indents is just annoying--now I have to go and reformat all of my references in my new papers. There was very little added in the way of the electronic/internet references, which I understood to be a major reason for this latest revision. Further, there still little in the way of helping with how to present more advanced statistical analysis (i.e. logistic regressions, structural equation modeling) in the stats section, so this book is just as unhelpful in this regard as the last. Finally, as someone who is very familiar with APA style, I just wanted the "highlights" of what had changed, and what hadn't. Unfortunately, the style changes that had occurred from one edition to the next were never clearly delineated, so that now I have to just look everything up to see what MAY be different. Of course, I could also purchase the helper CD for an additional cost...

In short, there was little improvement in this new edition, and some of the new changes are so minor that I wonder why they were made in the first place. However, given that this is THE bible for APA style, we have no choice but to go along with this new edition!

Don't waste your money.

As a graduate student in psychology, I suggest that the best way to learn APA style is to obtain a copy of a manuscript from a TA or your academic advisor. This book is ineptly organized and its own "style" is stultifying. The only saving grace is that it includes "pictures" of text formated in APA-style. A big complaint is that the Publication Manual pretends that the only kind of article written by psychologists involves presenting the results of an empirical investigation. Another is the unwieldy and illogical system of citation (especially of material found on the Web). Also, I would like for the publishers to at least acknowledge that what is actually published in professional journals often bears no resemblance to the format required for submission. Whatever you do, do not buy the APA Style Helper software.

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