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Assistant Professors Dr. Danielle Schock and Dr. Shauna Mayer have collaborated at Winona State University to develop a robust template designed specifically for doctoral students ming to enhance their proficiency in academic writing using the American Psychological Association APA style.
The accompanying educational resource is a valuable tool that comprehensively covers essential components such as grammar, punctuation, formatting, organization, and adhering to APA standards. It comes with a handy checklist and detled guidelines on how to craft, edit, and revise academic papers effectively.
Schock and Mayer emphasize the importance of selecting appropriate tenses and varying sentence structures for clarity. They advise agnst overusing intensifiers and pronouns; instead, they advocate using active voice over passive voice to achieve more direct and succinct writing. The guide also stresses limiting the use of demonstratives like this, these, that, and those along with the to mntn clarity.
The handout provides clear instructions on formatting academic documents, recomming Times New Roman as the font style in size 12-point, with double spacing throughout. It underscores the importance of focused paragraphs that should not exceed one page each and encourage the expression of a single idea per paragraph for coherence.
This part of the guide is dedicated to providing comprehensive guidelines on how to quote sources correctly, create in-text citations, and format the reference page in accordance with APA standards. Students are encouraged to use meaningful quotes rather than overusing them, ensure that long quotes over 40 words follow specific formatting rules, and include the author’s last name and publication year when citing.
A notable feature of this handout is a “Writing Cheat Sheet” that further elaborates on key points. This section provides examples to contractions excessively and suggests how to use pronouns sparingly. It also lists common intensifiers that should be eliminated for improved writing conciseness.
A significant portion of the cheat sheet focuses on distinguishing between active and passive voice, providing practical examples of converting passive sentences into active ones. The guide stresses the importance of clear, direct communication in academic writings.
The comprehensive guide concludes with a list of phrases to avoid that often indicate passive voice or lack of clarity. By following these guidelines, doctoral students can significantly enhance their writing skills and ensure that their work adheres to professional standards, thereby elevating the quality of their academic output.
This updated version retns the while refining the language for better in English text formatting.
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