THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA GRADUATE SCHOOL

MANUSCRIPTS REVIEWS
D I S C U S S I O N   P O I N T S

1. Hanging-Indent with APA Style Reference Lists
   Several students are claiming that APA style does not require hanging-indents and that the first line of each reference should be indented. They quote the following pages in the style manual: pages 175 - 188 of fourth edition which gives examples of how to lay out each type of reference, page 265 which has a specimen page from a sample paper. However, actual APA style is for hanging indents; the pages above show how to prepare the manuscript for actual submission to APA for them to typeset and produce the final copy. Their software will then change the indented first lines to hanging indents automatically. See page 176, 194, and 251. APA’s own reference list on page 319 onwards uses hanging indents. This is virtually the same for all the main style guides - both MLA and Turabian similarly.

2. Underlining Within References
   Again, APA tells us when preparing the manuscript for submission to them, underlining indicates type that is to be set in italics in the published version of the article. Therefore, APA published style is to use italicized type within the reference itself. See page 239 of APA manual. This is the same for all of the principal style guides.

3. Consistency of Headings
   What do we understand by this? Should the format within the preliminaries be consistent with the style being used? Or do we go with our own version as shown in the student guide and expressly require them to conform to that layout? See APA page 90 -91 for further discussions. Students must use the layout as shown in their declared style guide. The Graduate School’s booklet is a suggested format not a definitive prescription.

    

4. Compare and Contrast Reference List Styles
   See schedule below that gives a specimen reference under each of the three main style guides.

JE Chambers, April 11, 2001

Thesis and Dissertation | Graduate School | The University of Alabama