Reports vs. Manuscripts

Many of the ‘picky’ and strange details of APA style occur because APA style is a manuscript style. These details assist in the process of converting a manuscript to a journal article. The manuscript page header is useful if the pages of a manuscript become separated and get mixed in with other manuscripts. The running head is printed at the top of each right side page in an article. Figures are separated from figure captions because the figures are reproduced by a photographic process whereas the figure captions are set in type. The figures and tables are placed at the end of the manuscript instead of at the appropriate place in the text, because you, as the author, cannot tell where the page breaks in a manuscript will occur. The printer places the figures and tables as near as possible to their reference in the text but places them so that the entire figure or table appears on one page.

You may write your research report for this course either as a manuscript or as a report or as a mixture of manuscript and report style. You may omit the manuscript page header and running head. You may place figures and tables in the text. You do not need to worry about most of the ‘Top 20 Formatting Errors’ presented by Goodwin in Table A.3 (p. 434).

The following ‘errors’ apply to both manuscripts and reports: 12 – 20.

Estimated section lengths (double-spaced):

Introduction: 2 pages

Method: 1.5-2 pages

Results: 1.5 - 2 pages (including a table of the condition means and standard deviations and a graph of the results)

Discussion: 2 pages

You will also have a title page, a page with an abstract, and a

reference page.