Welcome to the new APA Style blog! With the release of the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the APA Style team is proud to present a new APA Style website and blog. In this post, we share our vision for the APA Style blog of the future.
What Happened to the Old Blog?
The sixth edition blog will be archived so that readers can access the content while transitioning to the new style. To keep things streamlined, we have closed comments on the sixth edition blog posts. We plan to make the sixth edition resources archive available through August 2020.
We anticipate that most users will start using seventh edition style in the spring semester of 2020 or thereafter. For more information, read our post about the transition to seventh edition style.
A Vision for the Future
When we started the sixth edition APA Style blog in 2009, we never imagined how much it would grow. Millions of people read the posts. People have even recognized members of the style team on the street (style experts, they're just like us). Many readers loved the sixth edition APA Style blog because it was an easy way to find answers to their pressing style questions, and they felt secure in getting an official answer from APA. They also had the opportunity to ask questions via blog comments.
Ten years on, with the release of the new manual, the APA Style team had the opportunity to completely redesign the APA Style website and blog. The sixth edition blog had a wealth of information, yet it could be challenging for users to find what they needed, especially if they were unsure of the search terms to use for their question. Readers also were often unaware of related content because old posts were not updated with links to new posts.
To keep what you loved about the blog and make it even better, we have taken the most popular content from the old website and the sixth edition blog, organized it on the new website, and updated it all for seventh edition style. As part of our Style and Grammar Guidelines, we explain the basics of paper format, grammar, punctuation, in-text citations, references, bias-free language, and more.
Much of what you used to find on the sixth edition blog, you can now find on the APA Style website.
Purpose of the New Blog
Because most answers that used to be on the blog are now on the APA Style website, the purpose of the APA Style blog is changing. The website will now be the resource for questions with straightforward answers. The blog will be a place for the APA Style team to explore the nuances of style guidelines and to provide insights on updates in the seventh edition. For example, the website (and the Publication Manual —see Section 9.29) will tell you that a book reference no longer requires the publisher location, and a blog post will explain why we decided to omit publisher location from book references. We will also use the APA Style blog to make announcements about APA Style—for example, to inform you of new products or to share updates to the style as they are needed over time.
Blog posts will also show up on the associated topic page, better allowing you to access all the information on a topic at once versus having to search for it. And blog posts will still allow for comments and responses. Because we won't have blog posts for every topic right away, and because we know people like to reach us in different ways, we are also happy to continue answering questions via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and email (StyleExpert@apa.org).
The same team of style experts who brought you the blog also wrote the content for this website and will continue to write for the blog. Rest assured, we want to serve you and help you write with confidence. Thanks for joining the style team on this new adventure.