Average Rating: 
Rating:  - not much of an improvement over the last edition
The only major improvement that I appreciated was that the new edition is spiral-bound. This alone makes it much more user-friendly than the last edition. However, in terms of content, there were very few improvements. The change to hanging indents is just annoying--now I have to go and reformat all of my references in my new papers. There was very little added in the way of the electronic/internet references, which I understood to be a major reason for this latest revision. Further, there still little in the way of helping with how to present more advanced statistical analysis (i.e. logistic regressions, structural equation modeling) in the stats section, so this book is just as unhelpful in this regard as the last. Finally, as someone who is very familiar with APA style, I just wanted the "highlights" of what had changed, and what hadn't. Unfortunately, the style changes that had occurred from one edition to the next were never clearly delineated, so that now I have to just look everything up to see what MAY be different. Of course, I could also purchase the helper CD for an additional cost...In short, there was little improvement in this new edition, and some of the new changes are so minor that I wonder why they were made in the first place. However, given that this is THE bible for APA style, we have no choice but to go along with this new edition!
Rating:  - Flaws in the APA "Bible"
It takes some nerve to question the "bible." Yet the, "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association," a major sourcebook for scholarly writing, has a major deficiency. Every detail of written style, format, correctly referencing every imaginable work, and creating bibliography lists is minutely explaiined and provided with clear illustrations. My criticism is of a practical nature. Today, the scholarly writer need no longer rely on 4" x 6" index cards for organizing references. Indeed, computer programs such as EndNote Plus (available since 1989-90, by the way) can save enormous time for the serious writer in organizing and also providing a database for references to be used in writing manuscripts; directly. Moreover, with the press of a key it creates a perfect reference list according to the APA format (!) at the end of a manuscript. This is accomplished in a matter of seconds. One would have thought that time saving modernization of publication by the computer should have occupied one chapter, at least, in the Fourth Edition of the Publication Manual of the APA..
Rating:  - You can't write a paper without it!
I found this version a lot more "user friendly" than the previous version, which I thought was very confusing. The fact that this resource is offered as "spiral bound" makes it a plus also. The sections that deal with proper grammar and punctuation use are logically formatted and easy to understand. After writing a couple of papers using this book I can honestly say that I am "getting the hang" of using the APA format.
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