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Methods to the Madness: Why Do Writers Use Citation Styles?

Last updated 5/6/2020

 

Visual: Screen opens to a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title “Methods to the APA Madness” and the video title “Why do Writers Use Citation Styles?”

Audio: Guitar music

 

Visual: Slide changes. Image of hands at laptop keyboard and the following: “Why do scholars use APA or any citation style?”

  • Consistency
  • Credibility
  • Credit
  • Readers
  • Walden uses APA style, 7th edition

Audio: Academic writers use citation styles for a number of reasons. First, consistency. Citation styles help create consistency amongst authors who are all writing using that style, ensuring uniformity.

Citation styles also help us as authors to create credibility as writers. By successfully using a citation style, you are showing the reader that you are knowledgeable about the way other authors format their writing in your field, entering the same discourse community as other authors in your field who are also using this style.

Citation styles are also one way to give credit to sources. By using a citation style you ensure that you give credit to the sources you’re using in your writing. If another author was using your ideas or data in their writing, you’d certainly want credit for the hard work that you did, so we want to give the same credit to authors we’re using in our own writing too.

Finally, citation styles are also for our readers. All of the above reasons include this, but essentially, citation styles help ensure our readers can (a) follow our ideas but also (b) find the information we’ve cited in our writing.

For all of these reasons, we use citation styles in academic writing, and specifically at Walden, we use APA style, 7th edition.

 

Visual: The screen changes to an ending slide with slide a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The email address writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu appears on the screen.