Research Guides: New Graduate Students in Psychology: APA Citations, Writing, and Organization

Writing Center
Offers free one-on-one consultation for all stages of the composition process, as well as provides workshops and handouts. For quick questions, try the Grammar Hotline at 301-405-3785.

Schedule an Appointment with the Psychology Librarian

OWL APA Guide
Quick, easy, and painless guide covering all the important aspects of APA style
APA Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition
APA's official publication guidelines. Not as easy to use as OWL, but does provide more detail for the trickier citations

APA Style Simplified by Barney Beins; Barney C. Beins; Bernard C. Beins
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781118289099
Publication Date: 2012-03-22
This is a compact but comprehensive guide to writing clearly and effectively in APA style. Demonstrates how to write objective scientific research papers using interesting prose Incorporates guidelines from the 6th edition of the APA publication manual Explores how to develop ideas, connect them to what others have written, and express them clearly Discusses the differences between written, oral, and poster presentations and offers instructions for applying APA style to each

Citation Management Tools
This guide will help you get started with managing the information you find online, organizing your citations and writing your research paper.
Mendeley
Mendeley is a helpful and intuitive citation management software that allows you to keep track of your research easily and all in one place. Mendeley allows you to read and annotate PDF files, take notes, share and collaborate, and export references easily.
Mendeley How-To Videos
Zotero
Like Mendeley, Zotero is a powerful citation management tool that allows you to easily organize your citations and keep track of all your research. While Zotero is a little easier to use in many respects, it does not allow you to annotate PDFs the way that Mendeley does.
Zotero How-Tos

The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
Call Number: PE1421 .P56 2014
ISBN: 9780525427926
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Avoid the awkwardness of academese (overwrought academic language that completely hides the meaning through complex and needlessly difficult sentences) with Pinker's entertaining and informative style manual.
How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco; Caterina Mongiat Farina; Geoff Farina; Francesco Erspamer
Call Number: LB2369 .E2813 2015 (Towson and UMBC have)
ISBN: 9780262328753
Publication Date: 2015-02-27
Not just for graduate students. Eco's helpful manual gives students insight into the process of researching, writing, revising, editing, and submitting large scale research projects. Some elements are outdated, but the ideas can be translated to today's research tools and methods

How to effectively integrate textual evidence into a paper
Quick and helpful guide for figuring out how to paraphrase, summarize, quote, and write effectively as a scholar