How to Write an Article Review in APA Style
Use APA (American Psychological Association) style guidelines when you are reviewing articles for academic and social sciences research papers. Following a standard style creates consistency for works in the same discipline. Providing APA-style references allows readers to locate your sources. Article reviews display the writer's investigative skills and ability to critically review material related to a topic.
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Instructions
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Adhere to general APA format guidelines by double-spacing your article review and setting margins to one inch on all sides. Select a font, such as Times New Roman set at 12-point, according to the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin.
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Write an article review to establish support for a larger work, such as a thesis, dissertation or book. Address the article's relevance to your larger topic. Select articles with sufficient legitimacy in your field.
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Place parenthetical citations within the text of your review using APA parenthetical citation style. Enter an author's last name and the date of the cited work at the end of a sentence that contains the reference, or immediately after a quote or paraphrase within the sentence. Place author and date at the end in the following way: "Researchers have studied how children represent mathematical problems (Alibali, Phillips, & Fischer, 2009; Siegler, 1976)." See more examples at The University of Wisconsin Madison Writing Center.
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Create an APA style references list of all sources cited for an article in a journal paginated by volume. An example of a reference entry reads: "Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896."
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Enter the author's name using last name first format, using initials for first and middle names. End with a period. Place the date of publication in parentheses, also end with a period. Follow the date with the article title, only capitalizing the first word of the article title. Close with a period. Enter the journal name in italics, capitalizing all major words. Enter a comma followed by the volume number and the page numbers. Close with a period.
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The APA style guide covers reference forms in addition to journal articles. Refer to APA for guidelines when citing books, electronic and unpublished references, to name only three types.
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Tips & Warnings
The University of Wisconsin Madison Writing Center provides examples for author, date parenthetical citations and for date only parenthetical citations. (See References 2)
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