The importance of APA formatting in academic writing

¶ … Academic Language

The author of this response read the prompt about the American Psychological Association (APA) standard. Indeed, it is not the only standard out there. There are other ones like Modern Language Association (MLA), Harvard, Turabian, Chicago and a few others. However, APA seems to be the "gold standard" that most universities and scholarly institutions glom onto when it comes to the citation style that is used.

The APA style is great for reasons that go beyond what is noted in the prompt. The prompted started to note one of those when it says that it "can serve as a signal to other scholars and researchers that you apply a degree of precision in your writing and research." To be sure, it is usually not hard to tell when someone is precise in the way they write and construct their argument. The orientation of the paragraphs, the order of the arguments, how the verbiage is used and so forth. Indeed, there will not be sloppy or overly personal word choices like personal pronouns, slang and so forth. It will generally be dispassionate and scholarly in nature but it will not be snotty, elitist or full of itself.

Also, the author of this response would echo the idea that having a standardized way of doing things is a good idea. Indeed, the APA standard is so precise that the common font used, the width of the margins, the size of the font, the orientation of paragraphs, the general structure of the paper (intro/body/conclusion, etc.) and so forth are all defined and then some. However, it is not so regimented and constricting that non-conforming papers cannot also be done in some form of the APA format. Indeed, discussion posts like this one can still mostly conform to the APA standard even if this is not a full-fledged report. Indeed, the APA style can be used for essays, research papers, dissertations and many other kinds of literature of a scholarly nature.