Errors for American Psychological Association 7th ed.

mdworthen
For example, Zotero produces the following as the citation format for the APA Style book:

American Psychological Association (Washington, District of Columbia) (Ed.). (2020). Publication manual of the American psychological association (Seventh edition). American Psychological Association.

The correct citation is:

American Psychological Association (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Note that the title should be hyphenated, but that is not possible here.
  • bwiernik
    Those are both data entry problems. Correct your data in Zotero to remove the location from the author field and change the edition field to just “7”.

    Note that Zotero cannot follow the APA rule to omit the publisher when the publisher and author are the same. I recommend ignoring that (1) so your data correctly follow other styles you might use, (2) for clarity for your readers, and (3) to not run afoul of APA copyeditors who usually don’t actually follow that rule. If you do want to follow it, remove the publisher from your data.
  • mdworthen
    Thank you bwiernik. Correcting data in Zotero is over my head - I did consult the manual and found the data directory, but after that I'm lost.

    No worries though. I will manually correct. Hey, Google Scholar doesn't get it right either. I imagine it's a complicated programming thing, and Zotero does so many things so well that I won't quibble. :-)
  • adamsmith
    I think you're misunderstanding what bwiernik means by 'data' -- it's just how the items are entered in Zotero.
    You can just fix this by changing the values in the right-hand pane. Checking and, if needed, fixing metadata after import is a standard part of working with Zotero (or any reference manager), so you'll want to get acquainted with doing that.
  • mdworthen
    Ah, right you are adamsmith! Thank you.

    All better now. ;^)
  • mdworthen
    For others who might encounter this challenge, note that the location: (Washington, District of Columbia), was in the Editor field, i.e., "American Psychological Association (Washington, District of Columbia)". I did not notice that at first - once I expanded the right-side column, I saw it.

    Changes I made:

    * Changed "Editor" to "Author"
    * Deleted "(Washington, District of Columbia)" from the Author field.
    * Capitalized "publication" and "association" in the Title field.
    * Changed "Seventh Edition" to "7th ed." in the Edition field.
    * Deleted "Washington, DC" from the Place field.

    Images:

    > Before fix: https://i.postimg.cc/tRmnZsD4/Zotero-right-column-before-fix.png
    > After fix: https://i.postimg.cc/254nnCyX/Zotero-right-column-after-fix.png

    Thank you for your help.
  • bwiernik
    Your edition field should just be the number 7
  • mdworthen
    Thank you. Apparently, it works either way, i.e., Zotero ignores the "th ed.", but it's better practice to follow your recommendation, I'm sure.

    Btw, I forgot to mention that even with the corrections above, Zotero does not place the date or the edition in the right spot.

    Zotero produces:
    American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 7th ed., 2020.

    Should be:
    American Psychological Association (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

    Not the end of the world. ;o)
  • adamsmith
    edited March 13, 2023
    That's not produced by Zotero's APA style (the date would always be in the right place, at a minimum). You either picked a different style or didn't change the style in the right place (Document Preferences when using the Word add-on).
  • mdworthen
    I should have known it was a PEBCAK error. ;^)
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