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Citation Machine®: APA Format & APA Citation Generator

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Citation Machine® helps students and professionals properly credit the information that they use. Cite sources in APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and Harvard for free.

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APA format is the official style of the American Psychological Association and is use in psychology writing as well as other social sciences. These style guidelines specify different aspects of a document's presentation and layout, including how pages are structured, the organization of references, and how citations are made. This format also stipulates the use of an abstract designed to very briefly summarize the key details contained in a paper without providing too much detail.

While it is sometimes overlooked or only an afterthought, an abstract is an important part of any academic or professional paper. This brief overview serves as a summary of what your paper contains, so it should succinctly and accurately represent what your paper is about and what the reader can expect to find.

Fortunately, by following a few simple guidelines, you can create an abstract that generates interest in your work and help readers quickly learn if the paper will be of interest to them.

The abstract is the second page of a lab report or APA-format paper and should immediately follow the title page. Think of an abstract as a highly condensed summary of your entire paper.

The purpose of your abstract is to provide a brief yet thorough overview of your paper. The APA publication manual suggests that your abstract should function much like your title page-it should allow the person reading it too quickly determine what your paper is all about.

The APA manual also states that the abstract is the single most important paragraph in your entire paper. It is the first thing that most people will read, and it is usually what informs their decision to read the rest of your paper. A good abstract lets the reader know that your paper is worth reading.

According to the official guidelines of the American Psychological Association, a good abstract should be:

Brief but packed with information. Each sentence must be written with maximum impact in mind. To keep your abstract short, focus on including just four or five of the essential points, concepts, or findings.

Objective and accurate. The abstract's purpose is to report rather than provide commentary. It should also accurately reflect what your paper is about. Only include information that is also included in the body of your paper.

1. First, write your paper. While the abstract will be at the beginning of your paper, it should be the last section that you write. Once you have completed the final draft of your psychology paper, use it as a guide for writing your abstract.

2. Begin your abstract on a new page and place your running head and the page number 2 in the top right-hand corner. You should also center the word "Abstract" at the top of the page.

3. Keep it short. According to the APA style manual, an abstract should be between 150 to 250 words. Exact word counts can vary from journal to journal. If you are writing your paper for a psychology course, your professor may have specific word requirements, so be sure to ask. The abstract should also be written as only one paragraph with no indentation. In order to succinctly describe your entire paper, you will need to determine which elements are the most important.

4. Structure the abstract in the same order as your paper. Begin with a brief summary of the Introduction, and then continue on with a summary of the Method, Results, and Discussion sections of your paper.

1. Look at other abstracts in professional journals for examples of how to summarize your paper. Notice the main points that the authors chose to mention in the abstract. Use these examples as a guide when choosing the main ideas in your own paper.

2. Write a rough draft of your abstract. While you should aim for brevity, be careful not to make your summary too short. Try to write one to two sentences summarizing each section of your paper. Once you have a rough draft, you can edit for length and clarity.

3. Ask a friend to read over the abstract. Sometimes having someone look at your abstract with fresh eyes can provide perspective and help you spot possible typos and other errors.

The format of your abstract also depends on the type of paper you are writing. For example, an abstract summarizing an experimental paper will differ from that of a meta-analysis or case study.

For an abstract of an experimental report:

Begin by identifying the problem. In many cases, you might begin by stating the question you sought out to investigate and your hypothesis.

Describe the participants in the study. State how many participants took part and how they were selected. For example, you might state that "In this study, 215 undergraduate student participants were randomly assigned to [the experimental condition] or [the control condition]."

Briefly describe the study method used. For example, you might identify if you used a within-subjects, between-subjects, or mixed design.

Give the basic findings. This is essentially a very brief preview of the results of your paper.

Provide any conclusions or implications of the study. What might your results indicate and what directions does it point to for future research.

For an abstract of a meta-analysis or literature review:

Describe the problem of interest. In other words, what is it that you set out to investigate in your analysis or review.

Explain the criteria that were used to select the studies included in the paper. Realistically, there may be many different studies devoted to your topic. Your analysis or review probably only looks at a portion of these studies. For what reason did you select these specific studies to include in your research?

Identify the participants in the studies. Just as in an experimental abstract, you need to inform the reader about who the participants were in the studies. Were they college students? Older adults? How were they selected and assigned?

Provide the main results. Again, this is essentially a quick peek at what readers will find when they read your results section. Don't try to include everything. Just quickly provide a very brief summary of your main findings.

Describe any conclusions or implications. What might these results mean and what do they reveal about the body of research that exists on this particular topic?

The sixth-edition APA manual suggests that an abstract be between 150 and 250 words. However, they note that the exact requirements vary from one journal to the next. If you are writing the abstract for a class, you might want to check with your instructor to see if he or she has a specific word count in mind.

Psychology papers such as lab reports and APA format articles also often require an abstract. In these cases as well, the abstract should include all of the major elements of your paper, including an introduction, hypothesis, methods, results, and discussion. Remember, although the abstract should be placed at the beginning of your paper (right after the title page), you will write the abstract last after you have completed a final draft of your paper.

In order to ensure that all of your APA formatting is correct, consider consulting a copy of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

The abstract may be very brief, but it is so important that the official APA style manual identifies it as the most important paragraph in your entire paper. It may not take a lot of time to write, but careful attention to detail can ensure that your abstract does a good job representing the contents of your paper.

Some more tips that might help you get your abstract in tip-top shape:

1. Look in academic psychology journals for examples of abstracts.

2. Keep on hand a copy of a style guide published by the American Psychological Association for reference.

3. If possible, take your paper to your school's writing lab for assistance.

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Need to Write an Abstract In APA Format? Here's How

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APA format is the official style of the American Psychological Association and is use in psychology writing as well as other social sciences. These style guidelines specify different aspects of a document's presentation and layout, including how pages are structured, the organization of references, and how citations are made.

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Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Search across a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.

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Frontiers for Young Minds is an open access scientific journal that brings the latest research in real time to school kids between 8-15 years old.

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Basic Boolean Operators Explained

No, those aren't my hands.

I never cease to be amazed by what you can find on the Internet and what people take pictures of.

Now that I have your attention, this post is going to focus on the basic Boolean search operators and search modifiers symbols and will not go into any detail of the many special Internet-only search commands/operators.

Although a great many people seem to think that Boolean = Internet search, Boolean logic and searching has been around WAY before the Internet. And here's a quick fact: you don't have to capitalize Boolean operators on any of the major job boards and many of the major ATS's.

Go ahead - try it. Nothing will explode and your searches will execute.
And now, back to the Boolean basics...
Boolean Search Operator: AND

The AND operator is inclusionary and thus limits your search.

It should be used for targeting required skills, experience, technologies, or titles you would like to limit your results to. Unless you are searching for common words, with every AND you add to your Boolean query, the fewer results you will typically get.

Example: Java AND Oracle AND SQL AND AJAX

On most Internet search engines and LinkedIn, every space is an "implied AND," and you don't have to type it, as every blank space is interpreted as an AND operator.

Example: Java Oracle SQL AJAX

Bonus: You can use the ampersand (&) as the AND operator on Monster.

Boolean Search Operator: OR

The OR operator offers flexible inclusion, and typically broadens your search results.

Many people incorrectly think the Boolean OR operator is an either/or operator, when in fact it is not.

The OR operator is technically interpreted as "at least one is required, more than one or all can be returned."

Although some search engines, such as Google, do not require you to encapsulate OR statements with parentheses, if you don't on most databases and LinkedIn - your search will run but execute in a way that you probably did not intent. As a best practice, I tell people to always use parentheses around OR statements as a matter of good search syntax.

Example: Java AND Oracle AND SQL AND AJAX AND (apache OR weblogic OR websphere)

The returned results must mention at least one of the following: apache, weblogic, websphere. However, if candidates mention 2 or all 3, they also will be returned, and most search engines will rank them as more relevant results because of such.

The best ways to use OR statements is:

1. To think of all of the alternate ways a particular skill or technology can be expressed, e.g., (CPA OR "C.P.A" OR "Certified Public Accountant")

2. To search for a list of desired skills where you would be pleased if a candidate had experience with at least one, e.g., (apache OR linux OR mysql).

Bonus: You can use the pipe symbol (|) for the OR operator on Google, Bing, and Monster.

Boolean Search Operator: NOT

The NOT operator is exclusionary - it excludes specific search terms and so the query will not return any results with that term (or terms) in them.

Example: If you were searching for an I.T. Project Manager, you may want to employ the NOT operator in order to eliminate false positive results - results that mention your search terms but do not in fact match your target hiring profile. In this case, you could run: "project manager" and not construction - this search will not return any results with "project manager" and the word "construction" contained within them.

On all of the major job board resume databases, some ATS's and LinkedIn, you can use the NOT operator in conjunction with an OR statement.

Example: .Net AND NOT (Java OR JSP OR J2EE) - that search will not return any results with any mention of Java, JSP, and/or J2EE.

Bonus: NOT has 2 main uses

1. Excluding words you do not want to retrieve to reduce false positive results (most common usage)

2. Starting with a very restrictive search with many search terms, you can use the NOT operator to systematically and progressively loosen the search into mutually exclusive result sets (not so common usage, but very effective strategy)

Basic example:

1. "Project Manager" AND SQL AND Spanish

2. "Project Manager" AND SQL AND NOT Spanish

3. "Project Manager" AND NOT SQL AND Spanish

4. "Project Manager" AND NOT (SQL OR Spanish)

Bonus: You can use the minus sign as the NOT operator on many sites and search engines, including LinkedIn.

Boolean Search Modifier: ASTERISK *

The asterisk can be used on most resume databases and non-Internet search engines as a root word/stem/truncation search. In other words, the search engine will return and highlight any word that begins with the root/stem of the word truncated by the asterisk.

For example: admin* will return: administrator, administration, administer, administered, etc.

The asterisk is a time saver for search engines that recognize it (most major job boards and ATS's) because it saves you from creating long OR statements and having to think of every way a particular word can be expressed.

LinkedIn does not support the asterisk, so you will have to construct large OR statements to search for all of the various ways someone could mention each term you're searching for. For example: (configure OR configuring OR configured OR configures)

Boolean Search Modifier: PARENTHESES

As a best practice, use parentheses to encapsulate OR statements for the search engines to execute them properly.

Remember, the OR operator is interpreted as "I would like at least one of these terms." Think of parentheses as your way of telling the search engine you're looking for one of THESE: (_______________).

For example: (apache OR weblogic OR websphere)

If you don't enclose all of your OR statements, your search may run but it will NOT run as intended.

Boolean Search Modifier: QUOTATION MARKS " "

Quotation marks must be used when searching for exact phrases of more than one word, or else some search engines will split the phrase up into single word components.

For example: "Director of Tax" will only return "Director of Tax." If you searched for Director of Tax without the quotation marks, on some search engines, it will split up the words Director and Tax and highlight them as relevant matches even when not mentioned as an exact phrase.

Bonus: Google auto-stems many search terms, so if you are looking specifically for the word manager, it will still return managed, management, etc. - even if you don't want it to. If you put quotation marks on a single word in Google, it will defeat the auto-stemming feature and only return that specific word.

There you have it - Boolean basics!

If there is something you would like to see me post about with regard to Boolean logic and search tactics and strategies - let me know.

Thanks!

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Basic Boolean Search Operators and Query Modifiers Explained

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Basic Boolean Operators Explained No, those aren't my hands. I never cease to be amazed by what you can find on the Internet and what people take pictures of. Now that I have your attention, this post is going to focus on the basic Boolean search operators and search modifiers symbols and will not go into any detail of the many...

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5 Boolean Operators You Need to Know - Loxo Blog

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If you have ever Googled something, you have already created Boolean search strings. If you can use it without realizing it, learning a few Boolean basics is definitely possible and can drastically improve your current sourcing efforts. The truth is very few recruiters write their own Boolean strings and even fewer have mastered it.

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How to write a literature review

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The Onion | America's Finest News Source.

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The Onion brings you all of the latest news, stories, photos, videos and more from America's finest news source.