You are taking an introductory psychology course that requires a seven-page research paper.

You are taking an introductory psychology course that requires a seven-page research paper.

You are taking an introductory psychology course that requires a seven-page research paper.

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Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010)
Answer the following questions related to the lecture on APA Formatting:

1)  What is APA Style AND explain WHY/WHEN is it used.
2)  Read the following three scenarios and FOR EACH ONE, decide whether or not it is plagiarism and explain why or why not.

Scenario #1: You are taking an introductory psychology course that requires a seven-page research paper.  You visit the reference desk at the library and get help finding articles on your topic in online databases from academic journals journals in the field.  You copy and paste the most interesting parts of the articles into your paper without putting those parts in quotes or providing a parenthetical citation for the source, but you do list the articles in your “References” page at the end of the paper.

Scenario #2:  In your psychology class, you were given an assignment to research 10 different phobias and write a paragraph explaining each fear.  When you’re standing in line to turn in your paper, you hear the person behind you tell her friend, “My sister’s a psychologist, so I just emailed her and she wrote back with the answers.”

Scenario #3:  You receive your assignment for a class and realize that you can write your paper on the same topic that you wrote on for another class last semester.  Because of the requirements of the assignment, the focus of the paper will be different, but you can use many of the same sources you already read just two months ago.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.