Computer Editing Tip: Paste Special

by Chelsea Lee

If you have ever cut and pasted information from a webpage into a word-processing document, you know what a mess you can get of font face, size, color, and spacing. It takes one click to paste and then five more steps to get the format to match your default settings—very aggravating. Paste Special is a feature of Microsoft Word (the program I use—please share solutions for other software in the comments) that can make your work easier and more accurate. It allows you to skip the format wrangling and to paste just the text you selected using the same settings as in your document.

What Paste Special Is Good For

Paste Special is helpful when you want to copy and paste from your Internet browser window or PDF into your Word document. You can use Paste Special to help construct your reference list, and in doing so you can reduce transcription errors and save time. For example, you can use it to copy and paste 

• DOIs,
• URLs, and
• text from PDFs or any webpage.

How to Use Paste Special

To use Paste Special, first copy the text you want from your webpage. Second, put your cursor where you want to paste in your Word document. Then select Paste Special from the Edit menu (Word 2003) or from the Paste button on the Home Tab (Word 2007, 2010). A dialog box like the one below will pop up.

Select “Unformatted text” or “Unformatted Unicode Text” (the latter seems to work better when copying from a PDF), and click OK. Your copied text will paste in the same format as the text that surrounds it in your document.  

Shortcuts

If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, the combination for Paste Special is either ALT+V (Word 2003) or CTRL+ALT+V (Word 2007, 2010). Finally, if you really know your way around the computer, this DIY lesson will show you how to make a one-key shortcut for Paste Special (it uses a Word macro to skip the dialog box and paste unformatted text directly).

Stay tuned for more editing tips! And please share your own tips in the comments.

Apples to תפ׀חים

by Stefanie

No film student’s education is complete until he or she watches 七人の侍 by the influential director 黒澤 明.

Wait, what? Who?

In our increasingly interconnected and multilingual world, it is not uncommon for people, researchers especially, to go beyond local or national borders in the quest for insight and knowledge. This may seem great at the information compilation stage, but once the time to create a reference list rolls around, confusion sets in. If I am writing a paper in English for my film class in New York, does 黒澤 明 come before, after, or between Hitchcock and Peckinpah when I am alphabetizing my reference list (pretend, for a moment, that the director and not the producer comes first when creating movie references; see the Publication Manual, sixth edition, p. 209, on the specifics of movie reference formatting)?

That’s somewhat of a trick question. First, the director and movie title need to be transliterated: that is, converted to the alphabet one is using to write a paper. In this example, I am using the Latin alphabet. Alphabetizing cannot happen if the references are not in the same alphabet! So, 七人の侍 transliterated is Shichinin no Samurai, and 黒澤 明 is revealed to be Kurosawa Akira (or Akira Kurosawa once the name is put in Western order—i.e., family name last—to standardize the treatment of names across references). The final reference for this great film would look like this:

Motoki, S. (Producer), & Kurosawa, A. (Director). (1954). Shichinin no samurai [Seven samurai; motion picture]. Japan: Toho.

Please note that if you are not familiar with the language you need to transliterate and translate, please find someone who is that can help, if possible. Also, if (a) you are familiar with the language being transliterated and translated and (b) you translate all of the titles for the references, thank you for your effort, but this does not earn you translator credit in the reference.

What other questions about foreign-language sources have you run into while compiling your reference lists?

How to Cite the U.S. Constitution in APA Style

by Chelsea Lee

 “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union....” —U.S. Constitution, pmbl.
  

Those immortal words open the U.S. Constitution. But how to cite it in an APA Style paper? The answer is in the Bluebook—no, not that cheery blue-covered 6th edition Publication Manual, but The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed., 2005; www.legalbluebook.com). The Bluebook sets the standard for all legal citations, and the style for legal citations that you see in the Publication Manual (see Appendix 7.1: References to Legal Materials, pp. 216–224) comes directly from the Bluebook. Although the Publication Manual includes a variety of legal citation examples (cases, statutes, bills, and more), citing constitutions is not among them. So before we continue please note that if you need further guidance on legal citations you should consult the Bluebook directly or your friendly local law librarian.

First, if you simply want to make passing reference to the U.S. Constitution in an APA Style paper, you can mention it in text without a reference list entry.

Law students described a great affinity for the U.S. Constitution in their response papers.

However, if you are using some part of the U.S. Constitution as evidence to support a point you are making in your paper, you should construct the citation using Bluebook Rule 11, which covers federal and state constitutions.

All citations of the U.S. Constitution begin with U.S. Const., followed by the article, amendment, section, and/or clause numbers as relevant. The terms article, amendment, section, and clause are always abbreviated art., amend., §, and cl., respectively. Preamble is abbreviated pmbl. (as in my opening quotation). Article and amendment numbers are given in Roman numerals (I, II, III); section and clause numbers are given in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3). The Bluebook states that for parts of the Constitution currently in force, do not include a date. If you are referring to a part of the Constitution that has been repealed or amended, include the year that the part in question was repealed or amended in parentheses.

Using Rule 11, here are example in-text citation and reference list entries. Note how similar they are:

In text: The founding fathers addressed the process by which new states may join the union (U.S. Const. art. I, § 3). Reference list: U.S. Const. art. I, § 3.

In text: Women gained the right to vote in 1920 (U.S. Const. amend. XIX). Reference list: U.S. Const. amend. XIX.

In text: During prohibition, the sale of liquor was made illegal (U.S. Const. amend. XVIII, repealed 1933). Reference list: U.S. Const. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933).

Thanks for citing the Constitution with us!

Secondary Sources (aka How to Cite a Source You Found in Another Source)

by Timothy McAdoo

You’ve probably heard that you should avoid secondary sources when possible. It’s true—if you find great information being quoted or paraphrased somewhere, it’s well worth your effort to track down the original source so you can read it for yourself and therefore cite it directly.

But why track down the original when you already have the quotes?

First, by reading the full text of the original source, you can verify that the context of the quote supports the point you want to make. You don’t want to be surprised by an informed reader who tells you that the original source actually contradicts your points—especially if that informed reader is your professor!  

Second, by finding and reading the original source, you will become better informed about your research topic. To a reader familiar with the research in your topic area, the citations in your paper are one indication of whether you have a firm understanding of the subject and of the relevant research. By contrast, if you’ve cited secondary sources for ideas or quotations that you could have obtained easily (or relatively so), you may give the impression that your research was hasty or superficial.

If your primary source is an archival document (e.g., a diary, limited-circulation brochure or pamphlet, unpublished manuscript), see Section 7.10 of the APA Publication Manual (6th ed.) for citation and reference guidelines and examples.  

So when are secondary sources appropriate?

It’s okay to cite a secondary source when you’ve exhausted the options for finding the original work.

For example, an out-of-print work may be impossible for you to find but could still be quoted in recent work by other authors. Or perhaps the paper you’re reading has cited a personal correspondence. You obviously can’t cite the original source directly in that case, so the secondary source is appropriate.

And of course there are those cases when an author takes a complex topic and puts it in layman’s terms. Citing this type of secondary source, where the extra level of analysis is much the point, may also be appropriate.

How is it done?

In your reference list, provide a reference for the source you read. This is known as the secondary source because it is one step removed from the original source of the idea or quotation. In your text, name the original work and provide the citation for the secondary source.

Let’s look at an example:

In his e-mails, Smith argued that asynchronous line dancing would be the next Internet meme (as cited in Jones, 2010).

Jones (2010) would be the reference you include in your reference list. Also, note that by mentioning the original format of the information (in this case a series of e-mail messages), you not only specify that this is a secondary source but also give the reader an indication of why that’s the case. Although it’s not a requirement, mentioning the original format answers this potential question for the reader so he or she can focus on the content!

Have any questions about citing secondary sources? Feel free to leave us comments. What kinds of secondary sources have you used?

Alphabetization in APA Style

by Chelsea Lee

Alphabetization—did you know there was anything more than A, B, C?

(Surprise! There is, or this post would be really short.)

Although we all learned our alphabet a long time ago, when you're writing a research paper your references can and do come from authors around the world. Those author names might have all sorts of interesting characters in them, from accent marks, hyphens, and apostrophes to spaces, punctuation, and nontraditional capitalization. With all those characters in the mix, putting your reference list into alphabetical order for APA Style can seem difficult, but it's not. In APA Style, alphabetization is easy as long as you remember these simple rules:

1. Alphabetize letter by letter.
2. Ignore spaces, capitalization, hyphens, apostrophes, periods, and accent marks. 
3. When alphabetizing titles or group names as authors, go by the first significant word (disregard a, an, the, etc.)

Knowing these rules, try your hand at alphabetizing some tough entries in the quiz below.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

If you can’t see the quiz in your browser or would prefer to take it on paper, you can also download a PDF copy of the quiz here (including the answer key).

How did you do on the quiz?

There's an Art to It

by Jeff Hume-Pratuch

Recently, we’ve had a surprising number of inquiries about how to reference artwork in APA Style. The APA Publication Manual (6th ed.) has a section on audiovisual media (7.07, pp. 209–210), but it focuses mostly on audio, video, and TV. There are no guidelines for paintings, sculptures, or more complicated installations (e.g., a chair, a photo of a chair, and a definition of “chair”). So let’s use the Frankenreference concept to model a few ways to handle art in your reference list.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

A good reference contains enough information to lead your reader to the source you used, as concisely as possible. At a minimum, this should include the artist’s name, year(s) of fabrication, title of the work, any other necessary or relevant information (such as the medium), and the location of the work. Here’s how a reference might look for Christina’s World:

Wyeth, A. (1948). Christina’s world [Painting]. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art.

But suppose you are an impoverished grad student who can’t afford a plane ticket to New York to see the painting in person. Fortunately, the museum has an excellent website where you can view the painting. In that case, use the website in the location element of your reference:

Wyeth, A. (1948). Christina’s world [Painting]. Retrieved from http://www.moma.org/explore/collection/index

If a work exists in several formats, it’s helpful to provide enough information to identify which one you’re talking about. For example, the original bronze of Rodin’s The Thinker is in Paris:

Rodin, A. (1902). The thinker [Bronze and marble sculpture]. Paris, France: Musée Rodin.

However, the artist also cast dozens of bronze and plaster copies of his model for this work, and one of them ended up here in Washington:

Rodin, A. (1902). The thinker [Bronze sculpture]. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.

Salvador Dali, in the Drawing Room, With a Pancake

Sometimes authors ask where in the reference entry they should put descriptive information about the size, format, provenance, life cycle, or composition of the artwork; the time, place, sponsorship, curation, and location of a special exhibition of the artwork; and so forth. The general answer is, you don’t—in APA Style, at least. If you are discussing one or two items for which this kind of information is necessary, it could be included in a footnote to the text; for a large number of works, a separate appendix with an annotated bibliography or even a catalog raisonné might be in order.

Advanced Topics

During the 20th century, forms of art emerged that play with the very notion of “art.” For example, the work that won the 2001 Turner Prize consists of an empty room in which the lights go on and off every 5 s. However, we can still cite the artwork properly, even if there’s no there there:

Creed, M. (2000). Work 227: The lights going on and off [Installation]. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art.

Performance Art

A genre that seems particularly rich in topics for psychological study is performance art. Perhaps you were fortunate enough to be present when Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman performed their TV Bra for Living Sculpture, and you would like to draw on this experience for your thesis. How would a reader go to the source of this reference?

Trick question! Short of a Vulcan mind meld, there’s no way to make that experience accessible to the reader. Treat it as a personal communication (in-text citation only, giving artist and date of performance). However, if you researched the performance in a more permanent medium (videotape, DVD, etc.), use the reference for that format.

Do You Really Need a Reference?

Not every reference to an artwork needs a reference list entry. A passing reference to a facial expression “reminiscent of Munch’s The Scream” can stand on its own, for example, and there are certain cultural icons that need no explanation. (One rule of thumb: If the artwork has inspired a successful ad campaign, it’s probably an icon.) Know your audience and use your best judgment.

How to Cite Facebook: Fan Pages, Group Pages, and Profile Information

by Chelsea Lee

Although Facebook citations may not be in the Publication Manual, this blog has addressed how to cite Facebook in general (just mention the URL in text) and how to cite particular Facebook status updates (make a reference list entry) in APA Style. That advice still holds true.

Now to discuss how to cite specific information from Facebook other than status updates, such as anything on a publically viewable page (e.g., a fan page, group page, info tab, boxes tab, etc.). Here are two templates, based on the APA Style FAQ for how to cite information from a website with no author, year, or page numbers:

Username or Group Name. (n.d.). In Facebook [Page type]. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from http://www.facebook.com/specificpageURL

• When the date is unknown, use n.d. for “no date.”

• Describe the source type inside square brackets.

Username or Group Name. [ca. 2010]. In Facebook [Page type]. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from http://www.facebook.com/specificpageURL

• When the date can be reasonably certain but isn’t stated on the document, use a bracketed date and “ca.” (see also Example 67, p. 214).

 

Example Citations

Because examples make everything more fun, let’s say I am writing about the cognition skills of the great apes and I discuss Nonja, an orangutan armed with a digital camera who lives in the Vienna Tiergarten Zoo (read more about her in this Daily Mail article). Here’s a citation for her Facebook fan page:

Nonja. (n.d.). In Facebook [Fan page]. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nonja/190010092116

In my next paper about the power of nostalgia and viral marketing, I refer to the Facebook group page for When I was your age, Pluto was a planet. As of this writing it had more than 1.8 million members (and its founder has even been interviewed by NASA). Here’s a citation for the group page:

When I was your age, Pluto was a planet. [ca. 2009]. In Facebook [Group page]. Retrieved December 16, 2009, from http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2207893888

For all these citations, whether to use "n.d." or "[ca. 2010]" is a judgment call and up to you, depending on the situation. And remember to double check your URLs—many pages can share the same name, so you need the right URL to tell them apart.

 

Private Page Citation

Because content from private or friends-only Facebook pages or profiles is not retrievable by everyone, if you cite it, it should be treated as personal communication (see section 6.20, p. 179).

What other social media citation conundrums do you have?

The Frankenreference

by Timothy McAdoo

This post is part of an ongoing series about how references work. Check out an introduction to the generic APA Style reference and the posts on the author or “who” element, the date or “when” element, the title or “what” element, and the source information or “where” element. Additionally, read about how adding supplementary information in brackets can improve your references.   

In The Generic Reference, Chuck described the basic building blocks of APA Style references and explained how to craft one from scratch when the specific case you need is not covered in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Once you understand the generic reference components (given in greater detail on pages 183–192), it’s also easier to understand and use the reference examples on pages 198–215 to your advantage. 

Here’s the key to getting the most out of the reference examples: If the exact situation you’re looking for is not represented, don’t be afraid to create a Frankenreference! That is, mix and match elements of the examples as needed. Just be sure that the reference you create has all of the basic building blocks: “author, year of publication, title, and publishing data—all the information necessary for unique identification and library search” (p. 180).

Let’s say you’ve found some cutting-edge data from a government report that is currently available online in draft form. You search the reference examples and find that there are only two cases of in-press works (Examples 5 and 6) and both are about journal articles. What to do? Just combine the aspects of each relevant example: That is, follow the format for technical and research reports described on page 205 (Examples 31–35, pp. 205–206) and combine either the appropriate “in-press” or “advanced online publication” elements from Examples 5 and 6 (pp. 199–200). 

Don’t worry if you can’t find two perfect matches; you’ll sometimes need to combine elements of three, four, or even more examples. Your Frankenreference may not look exactly like anything in the Manual, but it’s beautiful in its own way! Remember, because you want your reader to be able to retrieve and use the source, “when in doubt, provide more information rather than less” (p. 193). 

Using Brackets in APA Style References

by Timothy McAdoo

This post is part of an ongoing series about how references work. Check out an introduction to the generic APA Style reference and the posts on the author or “who” element, the date or “when” element, the title or “what” element, and the source information or “where” element. An upcoming post will give advice on mixing and matching elements of example references.

Glancing through the references examples on pages 193–215 of the APA Publication Manual, you may notice that some references include information in brackets. These brackets always appear immediately following the title element (and any of its parenthetical information). Understanding this element of an APA Style reference can give you great flexibility when creating references. 

As indicated on page 186, “nonroutine” information can be included in brackets. Fourteen of the most common notations are included on that page (including “Audio podcast,” “Data file,” “Computer software,” and others). But these are not the only possible notations.  Any information that is “important for identification and retrieval” may be included in brackets. 

This is useful when you need to clarify the type of source. For example, although Example 50 (p. 210) shows “[Audio podcast]” after the title element, “[Video podcast]” is another possibility. Likewise, in Example 53 (“Map retrieved online”) brackets are included to clarify that the title element refers to a “[Demographic map].” 

Brackets can also be used to indicate that the title element refers to more than one thing, as in Example 57, where “Eyelink II” refers to both the “[Apparatus and software].” 

In short, if you’re referencing an unusual item, consider using brackets to clarify. 

What’s the most unusual item you’ve ever included in an APA Style reference list?

The Generic Reference: Where

by Jeff Hume-Pratuch

This post is part of an ongoing series about how references work. It began with an introduction to the generic APA Style reference and posts on the author or “who” element, the date or “when” element, and the title or “what” element. Upcoming posts will cover adding supplementary information in brackets and mixing and matching elements of example references.

The last generic element in an APA reference is where a reader should go to locate the reference you used. (An alternate label for this element might be how—as in, “How can I locate that source?”)

Periodicals

For journals, newsletters, and magazines, the primary locator element is the volume number. It goes after the periodical’s title, in italics, and the article’s page range follows:

Elk, A. (1972a). My theory on brontosauruses. Journal of the All-England Summarize Proust Competition, 31, 12–27.

If (and only if) the journal is one that restarts the page numbering at 1 for each issue, include the issue number in parentheses after the volume number:

Elk, A. (1972b). The other theory on brontosauruses. Journal of the All-England Summarize Proust Competition, 31(4), 47–50.

Note that if the issue number is used, it is in roman (i.e., not italic) type, as is the comma following it.

Books, Reports, and So Forth

Give the name and location of the publisher (city and state or, outside the United States, city and country) for books, reports, brochures, and other nonperiodical publications.

Gumby, T. F. (1972). The brain specialist. Cambridge, England: Python.

Note that the name of the publisher is given in as brief a form as possible. Eliminate words such as Publishers, Co., and Inc., and use only the surname for publishing houses that are named after persons (e.g., Erlbaum, not Lawrence Erlbaum; Wiley, not John Wiley). The names of universities, associations, and so forth are given in full.

The “well-known city rule” is no longer in effect, so the state (or country, for non-U.S. publishers) is included for all publishers. However, there is one exception to this rule: If the publisher is a university whose name includes the name of the state, don’t repeat the state in the publisher location.

Clark, D. T., & Schoomaker, P. J. How not to be seen. Tampa: University of Florida.

Electronic Sources

The digital object identifier (DOI) is the new gold standard for locating electronic publications. Through the magic of international concordats and computer programming, it will get you to the online version of the article every time, even if the publisher has changed Web addresses. Over the past few months we have devoted considerable space on the blog to the use (and the pros and cons) of DOIs, so I’ll simply point you to Chelsea's DOI primer and handy flowchart for guidance on when to use DOI versus URL. You may also want to check out Tim's video on how to find those pesky DOIs, and Paige's discussion of document URL versus homepage URL.

Odd Cases

Do you have a locator problem that stumps you? Post it here and we’ll try to figure it out!