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Summary: "THE" APA Manual - Extremely Useful but not an Easy Read
Review: First things first. This is "THE" APA Manual. You will be using this if you are writing any academic papers in the social sciences - period. Like most manuals of style, it is extremely insightful in many ways, and just as idiosyncratic in others. Oh, and it is not an easy read. *Get over it!* If you are opening this book for the first time anytime within 90 days of your due date, you've got bigger problems, trust me!The 4th edition is somewhat changed from the 3rd edition, and the 5th edition is little changed from the 4th, so the economist in me says that it pays to buy the less expensive and just as useful 4th edition. In conclusion, this is actually a useful book, though it is less than optimally organized and not exactly a page-turner. Still, if you are in the social sciences, you have to use it, and use it you will. Get past all the "my gawd, I can't believe how fast 5 years flew by, I'm out of extensions and all of a sudden my paper is due" frustrations. Get a copy, learn how to use it and use it well - just like you've done with a million other less than user-friendly, yet essential references. Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Fits the needs of the University for writing papers. Gives the latest information and includes referencing from the WEB
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Summary: Good Reference Book
Review: Good refernce for writing papers in APA or MLA format. The book is easy to read and easy to browse through to find specific guidelines.
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Summary: The must-buy version
Review: Hard to review a style manual - they are all a pain in the butt to live/write with. However, this spiral bound version is the best, you can lay it down without having to type one handed while you consult it! Any price premium for the spriral binding is worth it, don't buy the regularly bound one, trust me!
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Summary: Here we go again!
Review: Here we go again... more minor changes to APA style! The hanging indent is back, we don't have to type long lists of author names anymore, and we can now use parentheses (woo-hoo!). If you need to prepare manuscripts in APA style and don't have a previous edition of the manual, then you need this book. Though it remains relatively user-unfriendly, it is nonetheless the bible of manuscript preparation. If you already have the fourth edition... determine how many of the changes in the fifth edition apply to your work. If you mostly write "plain vanilla" research reports and your reference lists mostly consist of ordinary journal articles, you may be able to get by with some handwritten notes in the margins of your old book.
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Summary: Software Help Available
Review: Hillysun.com offers software compatible with MS Word V6 that automates the formatting of APA papers. The Manual is still handy to have, but the software, FormatEase, saves a lot of time!
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Summary: What is your frustration tolerance threshold?
Review: How do I get through this thing in time to write my paper that's due tomorrow?! This "manual" is NOT user-friendly.
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Summary: Possibly Written by Beelzebub Himself
Review: I am enrolled in a graduate program that, unfortunately, requires all papers to be written in APA format. APA is far and away the least useful or user friendly format ever devised (although a professor friend disagrees and thinks Chicago style is worse), and is largely used by social scientists. Since I am not enrolled in a social science curriculum, you might expect that I would be spared this horror, but someone sold the Dean an APA bill of goods (probably Beelzebub himself.) My theoretical question here is what, exactly, qualifies the American Psychological Association to develop a style and format for research papers? Wouldn't English teachers and linguists be more qualified, as in MLA format? Why is APA more qualified than say The Airline Pilots Association, or The National Prune Anti-Defamation League to develop a writing style? Just a question. I figured that since I was stuck using this fiendish format, I should learn to use it correctly. My school put out a "Users Guide to APA Format", but it is very general and almost totally ignores documenting electronic (internet) sources; thus, I bought this book. I am generously giving this book two stars inasmuch as most (but not all) reasonable situations are addressed in it, but the format of the book is virtually incomprehensible and frequently sends you to multiple different places to answer a simple question. (This shouldn't surprise me given the lack of logic found in APA style in general, I suppose.) Unfortunately even the latest (fifth) edition is woefully inadequate in answering very basic questions on documentation of internet sources, particularly addressing situations in which quotations from internet sources are included in a paper. The index is, likewise, next to useless, as looking anything up (if it happens to even be in the index, itself and unlikely development) will result in a wild goose chase of referencing around the book. This is but only one reason the entire format may be more useful to psychologists than those in the hard sciences. What the guide IS full of is useless trivia, for instance a section on the APA "Policy on Metrication" (needless to say APA mandates metric units), and a definition of "HSD" as "Tukey's honestly significant difference (also referred to as the Tukey a procedure)." While I am not saying that metrication or Tukey's honestly significant difference aren't important (though I am inclined to), I am saying that a book that dwells on minutia like that should definitely cover the basics of references, formats and citations first. Like I said, most (but not all) of the information actually is here, but good luck finding it. Perhaps APA should put out a guide for using this guide. Better yet, perhaps any format so cumbersome to use and needlessly intricate should be dumped altogether for a better format, like MLA. At this point I'm even willing to try Chicago style.
Rating:
Summary: Adequate, But Not User Friendly
Review: I bought this book as a required text for a graduate degree program that requires papers to be written in APA style. While one can certainly find answers to all sorts of APA reference and citation questions that come up when writing a paper, the truth is you often have to dig for it in a text that is dense and not logically laid out. The process can often be frustrating. Since this book is put out by the APA, many colleges require this particular reference book for students who must use APA style. As any student knows, however, one needs a book that is clear and easy to use -- particularly when so many of these "style" guidelines seem arbitrary and not always logical. Grabbing this book in the midst of writing a paper is bound to make you more frustrated. I urge students to seek out better reference books and think all of us students should lobby the universities to which we pay so much money to find reference books that make our lives easier, not more difficult.
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Summary: Thorough but more than I needed
Review: I bought this book because my Master's program reqires all papers be done in APA format. I was not at all familiar with the format. This book defiantely helped me but it is a little more than I needed. It is very thorough and in depth and covers everything one would need to know when writing a manuscript. If you are doing heavy-duty research this book is invaluable. If you need it for shorter papers, I'd find a condensed version.
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