APA Internal Writing Style

APA

Academic Essays Must Use the Guidance Below

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Style Requirements within Documentation 

Required Writing Style

• Use active voice, rather than passive voice.
• [For ENGL101 and ENGL102 papers, use only 3rd person voice.  Do not use 1st person (I, me, my, etc.) or 2nd person voice (you, us, we, etc.).]
• Be specific and concise.
• Avoid poetic or figurative language; scientific writing is the most appropriate for APA.
• Remain consistent with tense (especially important to keep in mind when writing about historic non-fiction)
• [Eliminate ALL contractions from your academic writing.
• Eliminate ALL questions from your body-paragraphs, and only use questions where permitted in the INTRODUCTION or CONCLUSION paragraphs.]
• Use past or present perfect tense verbs (e.g., researchers have shown) for a literature review and description.  Use past tense when referring to results and experiments previously conducted (see pp. 77-79 of your APA manual).
• Title case = all significant words, usually, those with four+ letters, must be capitalized (see section 2.01 on page 23 of your APA manual).
• Sentence case = only the first letter of the first word, proper nouns, and the word following a colon, if any, should begin with capital letters.