Why are the APA guidelines so widespread?

March 17, 2006 9:52 PM

Of all the organizations, why is it the American Psychological Association that sets style guidelines? (I know there are others, such as the MLA.)

I can understand a group like the Modern Language Association... that makes sense. But how did guidelines set by an organization devoted to psychology, and not language, become so widely adopted?

posted by IndigoRain to education (22 comments total)

The APA came up with a style guide for use by psychologists writing for scholarly publication. They didn't set out to create a style guide for everyone. Other social scientists started using it, perhaps as a result of the cross-disciplinary approach of their fields, and that's why you see it used in other disciplines. There are lots of other style guides.
posted by acoutu at 10:02 PM on March 17, 2006

Same goes for the ASA (American Sociological Association) guide.
posted by luriete at 10:11 PM on March 17, 2006

...and the AMA (American Medical Association) manual of style.
posted by me3dia at 10:23 PM on March 17, 2006

Well, I'm assuming that most people got really annoyed at other people doing good research but were completely horrible about disseminating the results/conclusions.

Standardizations meant that the comprehensibility could be enforced. Sure, it means that otherwise literate people have to jump through stupid stylistic guidelines, but the journal also has the option to outright reject submissions that .. well, read like a typical web forum entry.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:41 PM on March 17, 2006

From a booksellers perspective, APA seems to be the most popular. My theory is that it's the most logical style book.
posted by drezdn at 11:18 PM on March 17, 2006

My theory is that it's the most logical style book.

Having just proofed my wife's dissertation proposal for APA style, I can assure you it's not.

The prevalence of APA style is essentially a consequence of momentum, driven by the organisational clout of the APA itself. It was there early among the social sciences, and it was easier to piggyback than compete. (It's a nice little earner for the APA Press, as a result.)
posted by holgate at 11:58 PM on March 17, 2006

Style guides are fairly common across many major organizations—it makes sense. As an organization, you want every publication that is published with your name to retain a unified "look and feel".
posted by symphonik at 12:01 AM on March 18, 2006

(It's a nice little earner for the APA Press, as a result.)

No doubt MLA is in a similar situation. The big dogs notwithstanding, in today's era of open source and wikifying the world, I wonder if there will soon be an "open" style book, free for all and periodically revised/edited by a community of volunteers. Seems do-able, and (hopefully) welcome in academia... or am I assuming too much?

OK, not an answer. Still... if a bunch of psychologists can inexplicably be the market leaders, why can't we?
posted by SuperNova at 12:24 AM on March 18, 2006

If you want a shock, download the demo version of Reference Manager and have a look through the built in styles. It comes with over 700! Basically ever Journal has a style guide so that they don't have to re-edit every article they accept for publication.
posted by tiamat at 12:52 AM on March 18, 2006

Another factor is the early emphasis on formatting in American college classes. Getting students to follow APA style is an easy way of teaching how to include references and organise a bibliography: you tell your students to buy the book and follow it. That pedagogical process is self-perpetuating, especially because psychology and related social sciences are consistently among the most popular undergraduate majors.

if a bunch of psychologists can inexplicably be the market leaders, why can't we?

Let's just say that a membership base of 150,000 and a $70m budget helps a fair bit. The idea of an open style guide is an interesting one, but one suspects that Wikistyle would make Wikipedia's editing wars look tame. People get very worked up about these things.
posted by holgate at 1:06 AM on March 18, 2006

The idea of an open style guide is an interesting one, but one suspects that Wikistyle would make Wikipedia's editing wars look tame. People get very worked up about these things.

Not to mention that each discipline already has a vast body of work written to its preferred style. Going to a new, generic style guide would require people to learn not one, but two, style systems in order to complete advanced work in their disciplines. They'd still need to read and use the older preferred style as well as the new 'open source' one. Part of the reason to have style guides is to make the reading and processing of the information simple and transparent, making it consistent enough within a disciplina that a reader no longer has to pay as much attention to the way the text is organized. This speeds research.

Different disciplines also deal with different types of information, and bibliographic style and the crediting of sources are two things I can think of which vary widely. It would be challenging to invent an open-source style which met the research needs of literature scholars as well as neurologists.

I'd wager that APA being commonest "from a bookseller's perspective" has much to do with the overwhelming prevalance of the self-help genre in commercial bookstores. It's probably much easier for publishers to treat most new submissions with the same editorial guidelines with which self-help is treated.

But in literature, it's mostly MLA, and in history it's often Turabian/Chicago.
posted by Miko at 5:17 AM on March 18, 2006

Almost every professional organization that's publishing journals produces a style guide.

For example, the American Geophysical Union and the American Institute of Physics both publish style guides (and believe me, it's a good thing they do, because the members of these organizations appear to be some of the worst writers in the world). It's just that the general public doesn't care about formatting figures and equations, so those more specialized guides don't get widely distributed like the APA one does.
posted by dseaton at 5:21 AM on March 18, 2006

As an editor, I've frequently used the AMA style guide; so far I've never had occasion to consult the APA. Just a data point.
posted by languagehat at 6:08 AM on March 18, 2006

I think APA is a good "starter" stylistic guide - it was the first one I was taught, way back in high school. It was also rather easy to transition from APA to MLA and AAA (American Anthropological Association) when needed, in college.

Not really sure why it would be that way, but that's how it worked for me :)
posted by kalimac at 6:14 AM on March 18, 2006

It's a nice little earner for the APA Press, as a result.

I very much have the sense that style guides are under a rapid revision / edition cycle for no better reason than to render the stock of used books at least theoretically obsolete. Since this is evil, that makes style guides (mostly) evil.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:29 AM on March 18, 2006

The APA guide is only in its fifth edition.
posted by acoutu at 9:45 AM on March 18, 2006

The American Chemical Society (ACS) also publishes a style guide, which I've only ever seen in the possession of one of my past or present supervisors or collaborators. Unfortunate, really, since there's a lot of good stuff in it.

dseaton: and believe me, it's a good thing they do, because the members of these organizations appear to be some of the worst writers in the world

Add chemists to your list and your generalization works even more betterly. I'm a chemist.
posted by hangashore at 10:03 AM on March 18, 2006

Style guides are meant to be useful, and they are when used appropriately. The APA style guide was designed to accomodate experimental psychological research. With a standard format, refereed journals, conference publications, and other academic papers could be digested quickly and efficiently. The APA style has been widely adopted in the social sciences and education for several reasons, not the least of which is the debt many disciplines owe part of their disciplinary status to cognitive and behavioral research. Also, the APA style is often the first style that students encounter because they take survey courses in these disciplines and have to write papers.

Though it may seem ubiquitious, APA is not. I can think of about a dozen styles off the top of my head and I know that many more exist. Each style has particular strengths and weaknesses. For example, MLA (Modern Language Association) is used (oftentimes, but not always) in English, Literature, and Linguistics. It is very good at research that requires textual analysis because it is very precise about how quotes, paraphrases, summaries, and other attributable materials are to be integrated into a text. It would be terrible to do a psychological experiement in MLA because MLA doesn't say anything about how to do tables, graphs, etc. Terabian is great for philosophical writing because it allows footnotes, which are excellent for explanatory asides because you can read them on the same page. It would be terrible for literatuer analysis, because lit analysis requires lots of quotes, which require citation, which fill up the bottom of the page with names and numbers that you only need as a final reference.

So, the organizations devoted to psychology does its own style guide, the organization devoted to chemical engineering does its own, as does language and linguistics, etc. etc. etc., each according to their particular needs. Once they are out there, they can be used by anyone. Sometimes they are used appropriately, sometimes they are not. More often than not, they are taught horribly -- given as much importance as the text itself, when in reality, they are simply meant to make readers' and editors' lives a little easier.
posted by mrmojoflying at 10:14 AM on March 18, 2006

I wonder if there will soon be an "open" style book, free for all and periodically revised/edited by a community of volunteers.

This is exactly what an open project is not good for - making arbitrary decisions that are certain to displease a large number of people and are meant specifically to govern behavior.
posted by ikkyu2 at 1:16 PM on March 18, 2006

I knew there were several style guides; I just never knew there were so many. Maybe I'm sheltered because my (very small) high school only taught APA and my college preferred APA and MLA.
posted by IndigoRain at 7:07 PM on March 18, 2006

I can understand a group like the Modern Language Association... that makes sense. But how did guidelines set by an organization devoted to psychology, and not language, become so widely adopted?

Because the APA Style Manual is not about language but rather about structure of print on a page. As students and maybe professionals, we focus on the placement of a comma or if there is or isn't a space between a volume and issue number in a citation. But, it seems to me, that the style manual is more about how the details form a cohesive whole.

I find the way foonotes, reference lists, etc are formatted in APA style to be easily understood. I also find it more difficult to scan a non-APA style journal for specific metadata. But that is due to my lack of experience with other styles, not something instrinic in any one style.

What I am looking forward to, and might already be out there, is a style manual for online articles. I know APA has an electronic references guide but something addressing the lack of need for page length, page numbers, and similar constraints in online publications would be interesting. Since APA's publications are mostly still print based there doesn't seem to be anything coming from them.
posted by mshellenberger at 10:40 PM on March 18, 2006

I would like to reiterate what mrmojoflying has said.

I have personally used or editted citations for: history footnotes (Chicago Style), Vancouver (medical), APA and MLA. (This all from being a history/english undergraduate with a part-time clerical job at a medical/sociological research unit.)

Each style is actually the best suited to its own discipline. Historians need footnotes to cite complicated archive references (like Cam CRO R.59.31.10.*, and that's a short form) and prefer to refer to secondary literature by title rather than by name, literature people want to cite the same texts over and over again in the most efficient manner, but psychologists want to know the year something was published right away, and medical people just want to cite an article once at the end, without specifying the page (which would be death for historians who cite thick books).

As far as I know, those publications and disciplines that follow the APA are those for which it is appropriate, like psychology, sociology and social science. I know our unit would produce articles in either APA or Vancouver, depending on the choice of the journal. The more social science oriented tended towards APA.

I love my footnotes, and you can pry them from my cold dead hands. (I hate endnotes - 500 page book, and you want me to flip to the back everytime I'm curious about a source?)
posted by jb at 6:50 AM on March 19, 2006