What is the purpose of all these different citation editions (APA, MLA, etc)?
Seems so arbitrary.
I keep getting told I am citing the wrong APA edition because it is not 7th edition.
I cite every in text citation (authors name, year) then do whatever word generates for references, which is 6th edition.
I am citing it proper to 6th.
Why does it seriously matter if I am not plagiarizing? At least it is still in APA?
I want to know who and why insists on making my life harder, because I am trying so hard.
By the way, I google 7th edition and it tells me exactly what I am already doing.
UGH. This has to be italicized, this cannot be, you can’t use contractions, you need a cover page. You need an abstract. I follow these but WHY ARE THEY EVEN IMPORTANT.
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4 Answers
This is what I did for website citations:
(author, year)
for reference page
Author, (full date). name of the website. website link
If that makes sense?
MLA is generally for humanities scholarship, APA for psychology and social sciences.
I agree, it is all a pain. As for the specifics of 6 vs 7, I don’t know the difference and you would have to check with your professor as to why they are marking them wrong. However,I would imagine version 7 is available online for you to check. Try OWL online which is Purdue Univerisity’s online guide to citation.
As someone who has developed an organization’s in-house style guide based on Chicago Manual of Style, I will say that the creators of style guides are likely driven by a concern for clarity and also overthinking.
The people who are making your life harder are the people functioning as your editors. Very likely no one else cares or cares too much. The problem is your editors are the gatekeepers, so I would just rely on them to tell you what to do and not think too much about it.
I know a lot of people find it unimportant, irrelevant, etc. but as someone who submits manuscripts to journals, I have to be able to prepare citations, references, tables, etc. to the format required by the journal (and there are seemingly endless iterations of style, not limited to MLA, APA, Chicago). I spent weeks formatting my dissertation. I correct student work (after multiple lectures on formatting). It’s just a system to systematize how information is shared. It’s important in academia.
It’s really not overthinking. It’s a system that includes a litany of possibilities. Titles, margins, when to use a comma, when to italicize, how to handle multiple authors, how to handle multiple publications by the same authors in the same year, etc.
It also matters because the same author(s) often have many publications in a year. And websites change. That’s why you’re required to include the date you accessed the website.
Maybe you need to upgrade your Word software. APA v. 7 has been out for five years.
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