Writing Assistant - tips and information about APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian and Seminary styles
About Writing Assistant
Does writing academic papers cramp your style? Are you stymied by writing styles such as APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian or even Seminary? Are you losing points because your writing style and citations are not following the prescribed style rules?
Our goal is to provide tips and help you understand different writing styles so you can write better papers.
Writing Tip of the Week
3/10/09 - Chicago style or Turabian style - the difference explained.
3/17/09 - Citing an Entire Web site rather than a particular article or articles from the site.
3/24/09 - How to cite personal communications.
3/30/09 - When are numbers expressed in words?
APA Writing Style
APA style writing is commonly used for academic essays, dissertations, theses and research papers in the social sciences. The APA style rules allow writing to be organized in a manner acceptable for professional publication and presentation. Adhering to APA style formats seems like a daunting task but it does not have to be.Tools are available that can format your entire paper and ensure you do not lose points for improperly indenting a heading, using the wrong spacing or citing a source incorrectly. A few tools are even offered for free but, beware, the free tools are only aides and typically do not have paid professionals on staff to interpret the voluminous APA style manual and ensure that all portions of your paper are correct.
APA Online Reference Entry Tips
Citing references from online sources is complicated because you have to include information about where you found the material online. The APA Manual presents examples, but most of us end up scratching our heads about how to cite these sources. Here are some basic tips about citing online sources in APA style
Writing Tips
Writing Tips
The internet has a wealth of information about academic writing; following are a few of the sites I find most helpful:
- University of Toronto academic writing support's Advice on Academic Writing
- APA Style Tips and Grammatical Hints
- Basic APA style writing tips that beginner academic writers should not neglect
- Tips for formal writing such as coursework, research papers, and literature surveys
Other Writing Tools
- APA Style Online Tutorial - an online course designed to teach you the basics of writing a paper in APA Style
- 3/18 - Newly added: Writing Resources helps you
with information, software recommendations, discounts and editing
services for academic documents. We specialize in APA, MLA, and
Chicago/Turabian writing styles.
- World Cat is a search tool for books, music, articles, etc.... that can help locate sources for your paper.
- If you need to format only one or two bibliography entries, try CarMun, a free tool to help format one or two entries that allows you to cut and paste the results into a paper.
- The APA Formatting and Style Guide
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