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Charlie's APA Stuff

First, if you plan to write more than a couple of papers in APA style, preperation is worthwhile. I recommend that you find and apply a template or a wizard. Word Templates allow you to quickly start a variety of documents with some text already in place (Wizards are templates that have some automation).

This wizard is designed to assist with writing a short APA style report or assignment. APA style rapidly gets very complicated and this wizard is not suitable for a thesis, some journal articles, or multilevel document. As noted below, there are much more elaborate APA wizards available but this one has the advantage of being quick, easy to use, and free.

You can click on one of the movies to the right if you want to see the template and a biblio tracking software package called Endnote in action.

Installing Charlie's APA Wizard

1. First use Widows Explorer to create a folder to hold personal templates. (I use "My Documents/Winword/Templates")
2. In WinWord, point to your personal template folder by going to the Tools Menu, select Options and then File Locations. Assign the location of the folder you created as the value for the "Workgroup Templates."
3. Right click on this apawizard.dot link, select the "Save Target as…" option then save the file to your personal template folder created above.
4. Restart Word

Using Charlie's APA Wizard

1. From the File Menu, select the New File option, and click on the APAWizard option that will show. (Note: you must use the File Menu -> New File option and not the new file option on the toolbar.)
2. Depending on your security settings, you may have to accept macros to run.
3. A form will popup. Fill in the blanks and create/edit your document as usual.

Some Useful APA Links

General

• APA Research Crib Sheet
• Psychology with Style
• Purdue OWL Writing Lab
• Vangard - APA Style Essentials
• Wisconsin Writing Center
• Diane Hacker - Documenting Sources

References

• Diane Hacker - In-Text
• Guffey - Electronic Formats
• Citation Machine

Advanced Document Tools

Endnote has arguably the best APA Wizard as a companion to what also happens to be a great bibliographic tracking systems. With Endnote, proper formatting is about as easy it can be. You still have to do some thinking with your in-text refs but even that is somewhat automated.

If you are serious about being a professional student, I strongly recommend the purchase of a professional bibliographic tracking system such as Endnote. If you decide to use Endnote and you are a student, be sure to get the student version of Endnote as it is heavilly discounted.

Let me know how it goes!