APA style annotated bibliographies - please kill me!

[SagaLore]

Who thought this stuff up? The format of these citations are overly complicated.

Screw MLA and APA... when do we get to start using XML style citations? :hmm:

 

[Jeff7]

No kidding. Programming in C is easier.



Edit: Here we go, some fun links:
The original K&R C manual - 228 pages.
(272 in the second edition)

An APA publication guide, 6th edition - 272 pages

A "quick" guide to MLA citations - 208 pages

Guide to writing citations in a C program:
// comment

/*
comments
*/


Guide to writing citations in APA format:

 

[dighn]

No kidding. Programming in C is easier.

this

 

[GasX]

you are welcome...

 

[Ballatician]

Zotero plugin for firefox is your best friend.

 

[dennilfloss]

you are welcome...

Thanks for this. Sent that link to my psychology professor of an ex-wife. Might be of some use when she writes her future research articles.

 

[mrjminer]

I'd kill myself if I had to use APA, as well -- but that's because MLA is superior since it actually uses standard grammar conventions (like two spaces after periods).

 

[Terabyte]

I like this one

 

[Anonemous]

Endnote/Papers/Mendeley take your pic.

 

[xSauronx]

I woulda sworn office 2007 made this not-too-painful but its been a while since I had to write a paper

 

[dfuze]

I like this one

+1, easybib has made creating citations so much easier for me.

 

[jlee]

I woulda sworn office 2007 made this not-too-painful but its been a while since I had to write a paper

Same..but I think I used MLA anyway.

 

[daniel1113]

Until you start doing citations using the Bluebook legal citation guide, you have no room to complain. Legal citations are the worst.

 

[nerp]

I'd kill myself if I had to use APA, as well -- but that's because MLA is superior since it actually uses standard grammar conventions (like two spaces after periods).

Two spaces after periods is not a standard grammar convention and is really rooted in the realm of high school English teaching that hasn't caught up with the fact that something called the computer was invented. If you had a job in the publishing industry, or actually looked at anything printed recently aside from high school papers, the two space rule is obviously dead and done.

 

[ScottyB]

I'd kill myself if I had to use APA, as well -- but that's because MLA is superior since it actually uses standard grammar conventions (like two spaces after periods).

Incorrect. MLA uses one space. APA uses two.

From OWL MLA (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/):
Leave only one space after periods or other punctuation marks (unless otherwise instructed by your instructor).

OP should look at OWL APA for his information: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

 

[preslove]

Look on your library's website to see if you have access to RefWorks. It's the best citation manager on the market, right now. It's web based, so your account moves with you wherever you go.

EndNote is as good feature-wise, but its a software program, so you can only put it on your own computers and can't use it while your at a computer lab or in your library. It's also very expensive...

If you use Firefox, Zotero is a good alternative: http://www.zotero.org/

Easy Bib is ok.

Google knightcite is ok: http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/

Here is a standard resource for apa: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

If you get stuck, your library should have a reserve copy of the latest APA edition.


As for the merits of APA, their latest edition was a fiasco. The first printing had tons of errors and had to be recalled. The second printing is better, but it's very vague on online journal citations. When there is no DOI string for a journal, you're told to include the 'Journal's website,' but students (and faculty) mostly access them online using databases, not the journals' websites. A room full of librarians couldn't figure out what this new rule calls for.

<------ Academic Librarian

 

[PingSpike]

When I was writing papers in college, even though I wrote many of them, my policy was to give one half-assed try at writing each bibliography entry before handing it in and just accepting any points that were marked off there. It simply was not worth the time cost to figure out. Since nobody but English professors even bothered to correct this section of a paper (As I suspect those professors understood it about as well as I did) it made almost no difference to me in the end.

 

[qaa541]

APA citations are a pain. I went to a graduate school program that required APA format and it was painful to learn all the minutiae on the formatting. We used Diana Hacker's guide (which is like the Cliff's notes of APA/CMS/MLA formatting) but there was still quite a substantial section devoted to APA formatting.

Reference lists had hanging indents (which I missed on my first try of a reference list assignment). Each entry of the reference list had a very rigid format with tons of periods that separated all the fields. The worst part of the APA formatting was that it required listing 6 authors before you could move on to the "et al" shortcut (MLS lets you do that after 3). You would not believe how many telecommunications articles have 6 authors!!!!! It was very annoying to type out these names in their specific format! <lastname>, <first initial>., (that is period then a comma) and then you have to remember the last one gets & (not the word "and"). Very tedious!

The APA format is also inconsistent when it comes to capitalization of journal articles and books. Journal articles get all major words capitalized, books and others do not (they use sentence format). I don't see why they do this, it just makes formatting things more painful.

The worst part is that some online databases (that have the article I needed for free) do not contain all the information (journal volume number, issue) that the article was originally printed. I suppose that this is really the fault of the database, but the APA standard is pretty strict when it comes to including that information. I usually had to consult another database (which did not have the article for free, but had the complete citation) to complete the listing.

Articles that had DOIs saved me a lot of time. Articles that did not were really annoying.

Clearly I am not a huge fan of APA format, but I did it because that was the standard the department at my graduate school used.

 

[nerp]

Refworks is good. Recent facelift, too.

 

[mrjminer]

Two spaces after periods is not a standard grammar convention and is really rooted in the realm of high school English teaching that hasn't caught up with the fact that something called the computer was invented. If you had a job in the publishing industry, or actually looked at anything printed recently aside from high school papers, the two space rule is obviously dead and done.

I disagree. Simply because it's become trendy over time to use proper grammar does not mean that standard grammar conventions are dead, it merely means that the population has become too stupid to know that you're supposed to put two spaces after a period. Also, I don't know what the computer being invented has to do with a grammatical format. I guess you also think that since cell phones came out everyone should be writing like, "u r so foo!1!!" simply because they can get away with it now? I suppose you could be thinking that you can easily tell single-spacing apart from no spaces now, and that double-spacing was necessary because it's harder to recognize spacing in handwriting--however, this doesn't really answer the question of typewriters, now does it?

Anyways... http://www.mla.org/style_faq3
Since this indicates the majority of people use/used two spaces after periods and are merely copying publishers in using one, I urge you to ask yourself this: why do publishers use one space instead of two? The answer is money. Publishers want to save as much money as possible, and that means cutting space off of anything they can think of, regardless of the fact that it reinforces poor grammatical convention. So, in using one space after your periods, you're merely supporting big business's brainwashing of the public in the name of money instead of the logical usage of two spaces after a period to end sentences in order to differentiate its usage from instances where a single space after a period apply (ie: after abbreviations). Have fun being a tool!

Incorrect. MLA uses one space. APA uses two.

Sorry, I wasn't talking about bibliographies; I was talking about the content of a document, my bad. Bibliographies have always followed screwed up rules, no matter what citation you use.