Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Discussion post 1: When I first started with this course, I thought, not another writing course!  But I think this one has been the best one I have taken.  I thought the new version of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (APA), was much easier to follow and read, since the 4th Edition.  I often thought why do I have to know how to write a professional paper?  As nurses all we do is chart, and in order to chart, our charting should be professional and well written.  I remember several years ago, when I was attending legal in-services and training, the one thing they stressed is how our charting looks.  If you don’t write you charting as a professional, it could have a whole new meaning in court!  To this day, I always re-read what I charted, to make sure there are no grammar errors, and what I said sounds professional.

I believe the largest area I learned the most from this course was the mechanics of style chapter and the writing and grammar style of the APA book.  Style refers to the guidelines for ensuring  clear, consistent communication and presentation in written works. (APA, 7th ed. 2020). Correct punctuation is so important, because if place a comma at the wrong space in a sentence it can change the whole meaning of your sentence.  I like the way the chapter was broken down and gave examples of uses of a colon versus semicolon, between and emdash and an endash as well as the use of quotations and parentheses. Correct spelling and knowing the difference meaning between the different words that sound alike, but are spelled differently.  Putting the wrong spelling of one of these words will change the entire meaning of the sentence.

The writing and grammar section of this book showed me how to cut back on my wordiness and redundancy of my sentences.  I am finding ways in my charting to make it shorter, while saying the same thing.  While reading this chapter I found several ways to enhance how I say things and how I write things.   I always tell the story while I am charting, but often it is so wordy, I ‘m sure who ever reads it falls asleep.  The synthesis paper grade will tell me if I really learned what I just preached!  I am feeling like I did learn something after taking this class.