Geez Esther, you sure know your stuff. I'll be writing APA formated
documents for quite a while. It might be worth it and this certainly
gives me a number of options and I really appreciate it. If I could
write the rest of the document in Word or OO and merge the reference
page after creating as you stated, then that would be a solution for
sure.
I've got a week or so to figure this out so thanks for the help.
On Dec 24, 2008, at 6:50 PM, Esther wrote:
Hi Scott,
I was going to ask whether you could just submit PDF, too, because
another possibility would be to use LaTeX for your bibliography and
merge the two PDF outputs. The problem with converting to LaTeX is
that the initial learning curve is somewhat steep to get started
composing whole papers in LaTeX unless there are other people in
your class/school who routinely use this, with similar format
requirements, and you've already got enough on your plate. (The
underlying program, TeX, was originally developed by Donald Knuth as
a way to get around the high price of mathematics textbooks because
of the typesetting requirements. As a result, you can control every
aspect of formatting, and publish textbooks with the results!)
However, it's pretty simple to use this just for the bibliography,
which is the part that's giving you problems. I Googled the APA
Style rules and found:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/05/
(Reference List: Basic Rules)
which has:
• All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference
list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is
called hanging indentation.
Apart from having to install TeXShop (which is accessible, and
produces output in PDF format) and the standard TeX package (with
LaTeX, BibTeX, macros, etc.), the actual TeX file for your
references could be pretty simple, and fairly close to what you
typed, with just a few differences. You would need to indicate font
changes by two letter commands preceded by a backslash, and apply
them with brackets:
This is an example of {\it italicized text}.
This is an example of {\bf bold text}.
A few characters, like "&", "#", "$", "{", and "}" are used as
control characters (e.g., see above for use of the right and left
brackets), so if you want to include them as text in references you
have to precede them with a backslash:
Marley \& Me
Then you'd simply need a rule to produce a hanging indentation.
(You should check with your teacher whether this is really 0.5
inches for your style requirements.) Put the definition ("sref" for
Scott's reference command -- there is a \ref command already in
existence) at the start of the file and add the command at the
beginning of each reference entry.
\newcommand\sref{\par\noindent\hangindent=0.5in\hangafter=1}
\sref Green, B. J. (2000) Picture books and teaching science. {\it
Science and Children}, 38, 2, 43--45.
\sref Deutsch, F. M., Lussier, J. B., \& Servusm L. J. (1993).
Husbands at home: Predictors of parental participation in childcare
and
housework. {\it Journal of Personality and Social Psychology}, 65,
1154--1166.
There would be a few more commands to start up the file, choose line
spacing, and default font size, but that's basically al you would
need to do to prepare your references in LaTeX. (Examples of
article entries chosen from the APA Style manual). You could also
reset the starting page number to continue on from the page
numbering in your Word Document and set the page numbering style to
match what you use in Word (e.g., number centered at the bottom or
top, or shown at upper right).
If you really get used to using TeX you can use BibTeX, which is
part of the standard TeX additions. With BibTeX, you include the
style file you want for your bibliography (apa.bst in this case),
and it will take care of the formatting, capitalization, italics,
hanging indents, etc. But you have to create a BibTeX data base,
and that's not worthwhile unless you're going to really need it. The
work goes into creating the database, and the style files will let
you reformat the entries to match any journal's style. It will even
order and number the entries in the case of journals that require
references show up in the order that they're cited in the paper.
Maybe you could ask about submitting the Word document for the text,
along with a merged PDF file for the references? Also, unlike Word,
which is MicroSoft specific, TeX is free and is available in
distributions that work on all operating system platforms.
Cheers,
Esther
On Dec 24, 2008, at 12:48 PM, Scott Howell wrote:
Hmmm, good question. I suspect it would be up to the instructor.
THe only reason I may not is I have to provide them a means to give
feedback and they or at least my last instructor made comments
inside the document. So, good question and something I'll have to
check when the next course starts.
tnx
On Dec 24, 2008, at 2:07 PM, Ryan Mann wrote:
Would you absolutely have to turn them in Word format? I'm asking
because I know for a fact that Latex documents can be converted to
PDF format. Maybe you could turn them in that way.
On Dec 24, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Scott Howell wrote:
Justin, I suspect your right, but since these papers are turned
in electronically, I suspect I'll have to turn them in as
Microsoft Word files. If I could convert Latex to Word without
any issues, I might just go that route. The big deal with APA
formatting is it must be double spaced, not a problem in Word,
but the reference page has to have the first part of the
reference against the left margin and indented something like
five spaces. THe problem in WOrd as far as I am concerned is
knowing exactly where the text is. I got dinged for this despite
my best efforts in trying to get the text where it should be.
Thanks for the idea, it is certainly one worth exploring.
On Dec 24, 2008, at 12:48 PM, Justin Harford wrote:
Hi Scott
I've tried open office a bit and it looks to me like you'd
probably have better luck with microsnot word. Have you tried
nisus writer express? I'm not exactly familiar with all the
requirements for writing an APA paper, but if the main place
where you are losing points is in the bibliography, an if the
only matter is indentations, you might just try writing the bib
separately in textedit. It won't do any smart tag stuff without
you knowing and you could just manually format each entry with
whatever it requires.
That said it sounds like you'd be doing a lot more work than yu
need. If you are seriously going to be writing papers like this
for years to come, it might be worth the time invested in
learning how to typeset with LaTeX. I am like 98 percent
confident that LaTeX could make formatting an APA paper a
trivial process if you don't mind a few lines of code here and
there. Again, sure it may not be easy in the beginning, but if
you are going to be writing papers like this for a number of
years, it might be worth it in the long run.
Regards
Justin Harford
Scott Howell
[email protected]
Scott Howell
[email protected]
