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| The APA Crib Sheet is a handy guide to using the format and style of the American Psychological Association in research papers. The original version of the Crib Sheet was written by Russ Dewey at Georgia Southern University (now professor emeritus), revised with Bill Scott at the College of Wooster in 2000, and updated to the current fifth edition of the APA Publication Manual (2001) by Doc Scribe in January 2003 and subsequently. |
Piracy! When the APA Crib Sheet was first posted on the Internet it provoked an angry reaction from the American Psychological Association. They threatened legal action. But attorneys assessed this threat as "blowing smoke" since international copyright law has long ruled that a writing style is not subject to copyright protection. Whatever their motivation, the APA's action has conferred a sort of underground status to the Crib Sheet. Copyright? By law (17 U.S.C. 102(b)) "the original and creative word sequences in [a text] are protected by copyright, but a writing style itself is in the public domain, no matter how original it is" (Stephen Fishman, The Copyright Handbook. 3rd. ed. Berkeley, CA: Nolo Press, 1998). You cannot copyright a research (or any) style, nor can you copyright a language, even a programming language. They belong to everyone. This is true of all styles, including the style covered in the APA Crib Sheet. Why? The rationale for this is not difficult to understand. For example, if you wrote a book with a word processor and stored it on your PC in Microsoft Word, would it then belong to Microsoft? After all, it's in their word processor coding language. Wouldn't it be great to get a copyright on all the works in the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, the paintings of Rembrandt, or even the musical style Rock'n Roll? More recently the courts have denied copyright protection to programming languages, even those invented by Microsoft and IBM! Revision History. An important objective in editing the content of the APA Crib Sheet is brevity. The APA Manual is 440 pages long, with examples to 95 different reference sources. The Crib Sheet covers 26 sources, but these are the most common used in research writing. It would be easy enough to double the size of the Crib Sheet, but doing so would add detail while diminishing the focus on essentials, rendering the document unwieldy. Fall 2005 Revised Title-Text Page graphic (the abstract was incorrectly shown as an indented paragraph). Expanded reference examples. Fall 2006 Added section on presenting statistics. Revised sections on Abbreviations, Bias, Italics, Numbers, Miscellaneous, and Quotation Marks. Revised Title-Text Page graphic (the citation to the block quote was shown incorrectly). Reorganized the Table of Contents. Added APA Quick Study to explain essential features of the style. Added APA101 for students seeking to master APA style. Permissions. Users may print, copy, and distribute free documents on this site without charge for not-for-profit, educational purposes. The style guides are revised on a regular basis. You are advised to link directly to a document rather than post it to another site. No commercial use is permitted--you may not add commercial links, pop-ups, or advertising to any document or page. It is the policy at docstyles.com not to include advertising in any document other than to provide unpromoted links to style guides and useful resources at amazon.com or other quality vendors. Instructors are welcome to use the guides or style sheets in their classrooms. No additional permission is required. Content © Copyright 1996-2006 by Dr. Abel Scribe PhD. |
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