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Voice and Person in APA Style

 

Imagine you are writing a dissertation or journal article in the social sciences. You want to sound objective and professional. For that purpose, which person should you use: first (I/we) or third (he/she/they)? Which voice: active or passive? Once upon a time, you would have said third and passive without even blinking. Not so now.

If you start with the first question, asking whether the first person (I, we) is appropriate for writing in the social sciences, you will find people on both sides of the fence. The choice of whether to use this ultimately depends on the institution to which you belong or the journal to which you are submitting. However, as far as APA style is concerned, the first person is not only appropriate but perhaps also ideal. Why? Quite simply, for clarity and ethical considerations.

Clarity

The APA style manual indicates in 2.04, the section on writing abstracts, that abstracts should be “coherent and readable,” which, for the style manual authors, means using the active rather than the passive voice (26). Moreover, in 3.18, the section on verbs, the authors recommend using the active voice everywhere except possibly the Method section, where “the passive voice is acceptable . . . when you want to focus on the object or recipient of the action rather than the actor” (emphasis mine, 77). The examples in these sections use “the authors” or “we” to demonstrate use of the active. In fact, more often than not, the style manual uses “I” or “we” in examples of correct usage.

Therefore, unless precluded by other standards (i.e., those of your institution or a specific journal), you want, as much as possible, to use the active vs. the passive voice.

Why is the active rather than the passive clearer? And why does using the active often mean using the first person?

First, the active voice is direct. When action occurs, the subject is doing the action. Moreover, when you are describing your own actions in the active, the most direct way, the clearest way, is to use “I” or “we.”

Take, for example, the following sentence: “I conducted interviews with the 29 participants.”

“I,” the subject, is doing the action, “conducting interviews.”

The passive is indirect. In such language, the subject is the receiver of the action. We can put the example above into the passive using “be” and the past participle (and switching the subject and object).

“The interviews were conducted by me.”

Notice, we can construct the passive without ever telling who is doing the action simply by leaving out the prepositional phrase (“by me”). That is to say, the passive allows us to obscure or omit important details.

Let’s look at another example to see where confusion can occur.

“The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.”

Here, you are not explaining who is doing what, which could cause confusion. Did the interviewer audio-record and then transcribe the audio-recording him or herself, or did the interviewer use a third party? This could be important for someone especially concerned with confidentiality. Even with steps not at all involving confidentiality, a fellow researcher may want to replicate the study and knowing who did what, how, and when will then be important.

 

Ethical Considerations

Let’s look at another example to see where ethical considerations enter the picture.

“The surveys were given to the respondents.”

This sentence raises all the concerns about clarity and one more: agency. When you use the passive to talk about people who are participating in a study, you are treating them like objects because they have action done TO them rather than doing the action themselves. This is problematic.

In recent decades, social scientists have worked hard to protect research participants’ privacy and mental and physical well-being (through informed consent, among other measures). Therefore, when you discuss study participants, you want to give them as much agency as possible. The APA style manual explains this in greater detail in Guideline 3 (Acknowledge Participation) of the Guidelines for Reducing Bias (73).

For example, instead of writing, “The listening task was administered to the participants,” you should say, “The participants completed the listening task.”

What does all this mean? What should you do?

1. In all sections, except perhaps the Method section, use the active voice and the first person (I/we) to describe your own actions and the third to describe the actions of other researchers (e.g., in the Literature Review section).

2. If you use the passive voice in the Method section, do so as little as possible and do not do so when you are talking about participants’ actions.

3. If you are not comfortable using the first person for yourself (or your research team) or if other standards conflict, consider using the third person for you or your research team (“the present researcher(s)”).

4. Finally, whichever choice you make, let us know so that we can edit accordingly.

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/voice-and-person-apa-style

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Capitalization in APA Style

In APA style, you will most likely need to describe a number of tests, measures, and theories, among other things. Your first impulse might be to capitalize everything because you will use specific names, but capitalization is not always acceptable. Here’s a brief guide to capitalization in APA.

Theories

In general, do not capitalize the words in names of theories. Capitalize only people's names, for example, Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and the cognitive learning theory. 

Tests

Capitalize only exact, complete titles of tests. Do NOT capitalize shortened or inexact forms, for example, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory vs. the Minnesota inventory and the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test vs. the Stroop color test

Note: You should always capitalize place and people names (when they appear in names of theories, tests, or anything else).

Scales

Many tests in the social sciences contain subsections called scales. Do not capitalize the words “test” or “scale” if they refer to subsections of tests but do capitalize the actual name of the scale, for example, the MMPI Aggressiveness scale and the MVPI Aversions scale.

Conditions

For an experiment, you will

 likely need to discuss different groups of participants. One group will be the control, for which you do not apply “treatment.” Then you'll have one or more groups that do receive “treatment.” You may refer to these treatments as “conditions.” So when do you capitalize group and/or condition names?

In general, almost never.

ex: the experimental and control groups

ex: the lecture condition group and the

 self-learning condition group

The only time you do capitalize is if you assigned them letters or numbers (e.g., Groups 1 and 2 and Conditions A and B).

Factors, Components, Trials, and Items

Capitalize factors, components, trials, and items when they precede a number or letter (not a variable) but not otherwise, for example, Factors 1 and 2 vs. Big Five personality factors and Trial 2 vs. trial n (where n is a variable indicating how many trials there are).

Medicines

Only capitalize brand names, not generics. For example, you do not capitalize sertraline (the generic name), but you do capitalize Zoloft (the brand name for that generic).

Health Conditions

In names of health conditions, only capitalize people words, for example, Crohn’s disease and diabetes.

Courses and Departments

Capitalize the names of specific departments within specific universities or companies not uses that are more general, for example, Cornell University’s Department of Linguistics vs. a department of linguistics.

Capitalize the names of specific courses (exact titles) not uses that are more general, for example, Linear Algebra 1 vs. mathematics courses.

Titles of Books, Articles, and Journals

In the text (the body of a paper), capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and all major words (not “a,” “an,” “the,” or prepositions or conjunctions of 3 or fewer letters).

ex. The Journey Toward Reconciliation (“toward” is capitalized even though it’s a preposition because it has more than three letters)

In the reference list, use the same rule for journals only. Articles and books take all lowercase except for proper nouns (e.g., United States), the first word, and the first word after a colon.

Book/Paper Sections

Capitalize the name of the section but not the word “section,” for example, the Method section.

Do not capitalize other words referring to other common parts of books, papers, or tables, for example, page 13 and row 7.

There you have it, a brief overview of capitalization in APA style!

Blog source: https://polishedpaper.com/blog/capitalization-apa-style 

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Professional Editor's Corner: Ambiguous References

Ambiguous References
What is an ambiguous reference, and how can we fix it?
Before we can tackle this VERY common writing problem, we need a little vocabulary.
You probably already know this, but just in case, I’ll offer a definition. A pronoun is a word that replaces or refers back to a noun (that we’ve already seen in the sentence or paragraph).

Take these sentences for example: Santana and Rachel have been fighting for their entire high school careers. They are very alike, which is why they often come into conflict.
In the first sentence, “their” is a pronoun referring back to “Santana and Rachel.” In the second sentence, “they” is a pronoun that replaces the compound noun “Santana and Rachel.”

Now for the most important vocabulary word. “Santana and Rachel” is the antecedent for “their” and “they.” So the antecedent is the original noun that we need pronouns to refer back to or replace.

An ambiguous reference is the situation in which a sentence contains a pronoun that could refer to either of two nouns in the same sentence or (using our new vocabulary word) where we have a pronoun but we aren’t sure what its antecedent is.

Let’s look at some examples.
1. The partnership between Mr. Stevens and Mr. Peterson ended when he embezzled money from the company and flew to Hong Kong.

In this sentence, because both Stevens and Peterson are men, we don’t know to which person the “he” refers. Who embezzled the money and traveled to Hong Kong?
To make this reference clear, we need to replace “he” with the name of the person.
The partnership between Mr. Stevens and Mr. Peterson ended when Mr. Stevens embezzled money from the company and flew to Hong Kong.

2. The mayor appointed Ms. Lopez chair of the committee because she was convinced of the need for an environmental study.

We don’t know whether the mayor is a man or a woman, so “she” could refer to the mayor or Ms. Lopez. To fix this, we need to either replace “she” with a name or rewrite the sentence so the reference is clear.
Suppose the mayor is “she.”

We could use a participial adjective and rewrite the sentence so that it’s right next to “mayor”: Convinced of the need for an environmental study, the mayor appointed Ms. Lopez chair of the committee.

As with all participial adjectives at the beginning of a sentence, this one refers to the subject (i.e., the mayor).
Suppose Ms. Lopez is “she.”

We need to connect being convinced with Ms. Lopez. Here’s one way.
Because Ms. Lopez was convinced of the need for an environmental study, the mayor appointed her chair of the committee.

Here we switch where the pronoun goes. Instead of putting the pronoun in the “convinced” part of the sentence, which could refer to either the mayor or Ms. Lopez, we put it in the “appointed” part, which logic dictates can only apply to Ms. Lopez. Then we KNOW that “her” must refer to Ms. Lopez because the mayor would not appoint herself chair of the committee (but if she did, we would use the reflexive pronoun “herself” instead of “her” because the mayor is also the subject of the main sentence).

We can rewrite sentences to make ambiguous references clear in MANY ways, but here are a couple of tips.

1. We can ALWAYS simply repeat the noun (that the pronoun was supposed to replace). In a pinch, do that.
2. Put the action as close to the noun the pronoun replaces as possible.
3. Apply logic. Even if a pronoun could grammatically speaking refer to one of two nouns, if only one makes sense, that’s clear enough.

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Top 10 Essay Writing Tips by Essay editors

 

Essay writing has significant importance in our day-to-day lives. It helps communicate our thoughts, principles, ideologies, and ideas to others. Irrespective of the type of essay being written, it is a reflection of the writer’s creative capability, writing skills, and vocabulary. Looking at the increased importance of essay writing in day-to-day life, it has been made compulsory in various academic activities. With the huge level of competition in academia, it is very much essential to possess significant writing skills to stay ahead of peers.

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Those who desire to be the best demand the best editors to acquire the best level of support. The Essay editors by Polished Paper are professionally trained in this field. They offer customized solutions for all types of editing, including academic essay editing. An effective academic essay must possess certain necessary features,including grammatical correctness, concision, and clarity, and be error-free, suitably structured, and properly formatted. To ensure your essay contains all of these qualities, experts at Polished Paper off the following tips:

•    Thoroughly read of all the instructions to gain a crystal clear understanding of them prior to writing your essay.
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•    Identify and acquire sources of information from which to write your essay.
•    The next step is to elaborate on the points mentioned in the outline.
•    Use simple, concise, and clear language to ensure the reader can clearly understanding the concepts.
•    Place additional emphasis on spelling and grammar.
•    After completing the essay, once again go through the instructions and the essay to each concept is addressed.
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