apa format article review example

apa format article review example

Writing an Effective APA Format Article Review

1. Introduction

The American Psychological Association or the APA writing format is one of the most widely used formats in writing academic papers, particularly in the field of science. This is mainly attributed to the fact that this writing style is very simple in nature and it does not take much time to memorize and begin using it. When one is assigned to write an APA format paper, most students are typically referred to Purdue Owl APA formatting page or the official APA website. While these resources provide a lot of information on how to write research papers, often it can be confusing to many students who are not familiar with the APA writing style. The purpose of this paper is to review a journal article (Effects of Violence on Aggressive Thoughts and Behaviors) and to explain certain aspects of the APA writing format. Throughout the course of this paper, I will discuss the various elements of the journal article and how these elements affect the way the article is written using the APA writing style. By examining this article page by page, we will gain a better understanding of how to write a paper using the APA format and how to write a good research paper.

2. Understanding APA Format

Last, it is vital to insert page numbers for remnants of the paper. Place the page number in the header (in the top margin), aligned to the right. Always begin with the title page.

Most of the sources used in APA style are from databases. To have your bibliography or works cited list automatically made for you, and avoid common mistakes, use the LCC Library Database.

It is important to list your references on a new page. This page should be separate from other pages and should contain a running head. Type “References” centered at the top of the page. Then list your references, centered on the page, and in hanging indent format (do a reverse indent on the 1st line of each reference entry, ½ inch from the left margin). This will free up space within your paper.

Underlining – Do not underline any titles or headings. This will take up too much space, and make your writing look juvenile.

Line Spacing – All text in the paper should be double-spaced. Titles, headings, footnotes, and quotations should all be double-spaced to maintain coherence.

Font Size and Type – Fonts should be 12-point, Times New Roman. Although sans serif fonts such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode may be acceptable for parts of the text that are 16-point or larger and titles, they are hard to read and should be avoided.

Formerly, the required measurement for margins was 1 ½ inch. Now, margins on all sides (top, bottom, left and right) should each measure just 1 inch.

When writing a journal article, literature review, convention paper, or any other academic document, authors must include in-text citations whenever they refer to, summarize, paraphrase, or quote from another source. In addition, every source that appears in the reference list must have at least one corresponding in-text citation. APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998, p. 199). APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998, p. 199). This may be attributed to the fact that many students did not have the opportunity to learn about APA style earlier in their academic programs. Whatever the case, it may be difficult for the student to grasp the intricacies of the style, and it may also be difficult to apply this style to their own work. What follows are some useful pointers for those of you who have been asked to write a paper using the APA format. In general, your paper should follow these formatting guidelines:

3. Key Elements of an Article Review

f. This may be followed by another paragraph, or negative aspect first. Another possibility, speculative but quite possible, is to begin with the negative aspects. If this can be done, the rest of the review can be quite positive, or can even just be balanced. This is often the easiest and the best approach for those new to writing. No author is going to find suggestions for correction of his/her work to be an enjoyable experience, but remember that the reviewer’s comments are as important to the editor as they are to the author. By doing his job well, the reviewer can greatly enhance the article which he has been asked to evaluate.

e. Discuss the positive aspects, then the negative, then conclude with the positive.

d. Present the positive aspects first.

c. Discuss the positive aspects of the article. It would be best to take several direct quotes from the article and interpret them. This is especially important in a review of an article dealing with a controversial subject. Do the quotes contain information, or are they simply filler?

b. Summarize the article in the next paragraph. Do not feel the need to discuss every element of the article, an article review is not a free writing or a summary. We are looking to create a narrow and detailed review.

a. Begin with a bibliographic citation of the article (type of article, title, author, journal title, date, page, etc.).

5. Writing Your Review

b. Read the article at least one time. You need to read the article once to get the main idea about the article, at the second time read the article carefully and look for the point the author is trying to make. In the second to last paragraph, does it contain a good conclusion to the article? This is often a good place to start when writing an article review.

a. Before you begin to read, consider the elements you will need to include in your review. The following items may help: Does the author(s) make convincing statements? Are his/her conclusions on the subject matter convincing? Does the author(s) offer an alternative view on the subject matter?

4. Preparing to Write Your Review

Topic, comments and the number of characters must mention during submission of article.

4. Structuring Your Article Review

This article review is to research how to structure an article review using APA format; thus, it only seems logical to first address the structural components of an APA article. According to the American Psychological Association, an APA article consists of four major parts: Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References. Each of these components carries their own individual expectations, making it important to address each one separately. The first step in constructing your article review is choosing an appropriate article. We were instructed to select a journal or research article, providing the possibility of an experiment (an empirical study), or simply a theoretical review. This requires some initial reviewing of articles to find one of interest, but also one with a substantial amount of available data. Once you have chosen an article, the next step would be to identify whether the article is an empirical study or a theoretical study. This step is extremely important as it sets the framework for your review; key components of an APA empirical study are the utilization of an introduction, method, results, and discussion. Meanwhile, a theoretical article may only encompass an introduction and discussion. With this information in mind, one could locate scaffold APA article templates to use as a guideline for reviewing their respective articles. APA templates and checklists provide detailed guidelines and expectations for specific article types. These prove to be an invaluable tool and are highly recommended as a resource for structuring your review and are readily available online.

5. Conclusion

APA format article review is another type of writing. Writing creatively by basing our thinking on one article isn’t easy for some people because we need to put essence into it by organizing it clearly and making it understandable for anyone who reads it. By doing a review with APA format, this will train you to understand and put your thinking on an article on paper with good language. By making an article review, the article writer can also see how well we understand the article. In short, the more we understand the article, the easier it is for us to make the article review with good results and essence.

You also need to develop creativity by making a new article review by following the steps in making an article review based on APA format. Always learn from the right sources and try to understand them by doing advanced reading and having discussions to improve your understanding with friends. By doing an article review, you also help yourself to understand an article because you need to make a summary of the article in making an article review with good grammar and language to make it easily understandable for other people. Although it can be difficult at first, you will find that the more you understand an article and make a review, it will get easier.

Analysing an article using APA format all starts from choosing a right article to review, reading and understanding it by taking notes, organizing your notes, thinking how to summarize the article, making an outline of your article review and following it, and finally writing your article review. Always put an essence and make sure the reader knows that this article review is your thinking based on the article with APA format in mind.