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Preferred APA bibliography package

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Timothy Wilson

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Sep 19, 2001, 3:22:10 PM9/19/01
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Hey everyone,

I'm about to start working on some papers that require citations to be in
APA format. I see from the CTAN listings that there are several packages
that seem APA-related. Is there one that is generally preferred?

Any specific hints on using APA in LaTeX documents?

-Tim

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Erwin Kipperman

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Sep 20, 2001, 3:56:33 AM9/20/01
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Hi,

There are a couple of APA related bibliography style packages, like apacite
and apalike and some others. They can be downloaded from the CTAN archives:
http://www.ctan.org (simply search on the string 'apa'). Most of them differ
only slightly from one another.

Success,

Erwin.

Olivier Crouzet

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Sep 20, 2001, 2:55:45 AM9/20/01
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Hi,

I've just started using some apa packages to write papers too. After a
quick look at several of them, I've only tried apa.cls with apacite.sty
(needed by apa.cls) it is great. Both documentations are short but well
done. I've just experienced a problem with my tables when I want to format
the paper with a 'printed journal appearance' but it is perfect in the
manuscript mode (which is what I really need anyway). The apacite bib
style is great too. Everything seems to be possible with it.

I'm sorry I cannot give you any advice about the others but apa.cls is
really well done and uses apacite whereas some others try to implement
their own bib style, which is probably not usefull anymore regarding the
quality of apacite.

Hope this helps.
Olivier.


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***************************************************************
Olivier Crouzet
Human and Machine Perception Research Centre
MacKay Institute of Communication and Neuroscience
Department of Life Sciences
Keele University
Keele
ST5 5BG
United Kingdom
*****************************************************************

Athanassios Protopapas

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Sep 24, 2001, 10:25:33 AM9/24/01
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Hi and thanks for the kind words about apa.cls.

I must point out that apa.cls formats documents according to the 4th
edition of the APA manual and not the recently published 5th edition,
though I do plan to make the changes some time soon (famous last
words?). Hopefully editors won't fuss about this for a while, which
will give us enough of a transition time.

What problems did you have with your tables?

Thanassi Protopapas

Olivier Crouzet wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've just started using some apa packages to write papers too. After a
> quick look at several of them, I've only tried apa.cls with apacite.sty
> (needed by apa.cls) it is great. Both documentations are short but well
> done. I've just experienced a problem with my tables when I want to format
> the paper with a 'printed journal appearance' but it is perfect in the
> manuscript mode (which is what I really need anyway). The apacite bib
> style is great too. Everything seems to be possible with it.
>
> I'm sorry I cannot give you any advice about the others but apa.cls is
> really well done and uses apacite whereas some others try to implement
> their own bib style, which is probably not usefull anymore regarding the
> quality of apacite.
>
> Hope this helps.
> Olivier.
>

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Athanassios Protopapas, PhD Department of Speech Technology
Researcher B Department of Educational Technology
Phone: +30 1 687 5409 Institute for Language and Speech Processing
Fax: +30 1 685 4270 Epidavrou & Artemidos 6, Marousi
e-mail: prot...@ilsp.gr GR-151 25 ATHENS, Greece

Olivier Crouzet

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Sep 24, 2001, 10:09:23 AM9/24/01
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Hi,

> What problems did you have with your tables?
>
> Thanassi Protopapas
>
>

Well I 'had' a problem but not anymore. I used the tabularx package to
create my tables and each table was expanded outside of the page in
journal mode. I first thought it had probably been generated by the use of
\textwidth or \linewidth..., I still can not remember which one is the
length of line inside a column :-(. But after changing the parameter, it
did not change anything. Finally after a while I discovered that only the
columns marked as X columns were affected. So I think it may be a bug in
tabularx (or at least an incompatibility with apa.cls, but I'm not a TeX
guru :-(( so I can not help much here. Probably I should have a look at
the tabularx.sty file to check how X columns are setup in this package but
perhaps later...

Then I realised that I really do not need tabularx and that I can do great
tables with tabular by reading the manual!

So my problem is solved. I do not know if other people have had the same
experience, and I do not know if this is related to either tabularx or apa
or both but it may be worth knowing this.

Olivier.

PS: By the way, thanks for your involvement in apa.cls. If I can be of any
help (though I am not a TeX programmer but I like to learn programming
languages so why not this one) for example upgrading to the 5th edition of
the APA manual, I think I would enjoy it.

Timothy Wilson

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Sep 27, 2001, 11:03:10 AM9/27/01
to
Athanassios Protopapas wrote:

> Hi and thanks for the kind words about apa.cls.
>
> I must point out that apa.cls formats documents according to the 4th
> edition of the APA manual and not the recently published 5th edition,
> though I do plan to make the changes some time soon (famous last
> words?). Hopefully editors won't fuss about this for a while, which
> will give us enough of a transition time.

I'm looking forward to starting to work with apa.cls. Is there a sample
paper or article included with apa.cls? I like to have an example to look
at while I'm learning something new. Anybody have a short something to post?

Athanassios Protopapas

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Sep 28, 2001, 10:17:07 AM9/28/01
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There is an example.tex in the distribution which is not meant to be
compiled with LaTeX because it has mixed instructions and examples (so
what you get is mainly error messages). Just read through and "steal"
any parts of code that look relevant to your purposes.

Thanassi


Timothy Wilson wrote:
>
> I'm looking forward to starting to work with apa.cls. Is there a sample
> paper or article included with apa.cls? I like to have an example to look
> at while I'm learning something new. Anybody have a short something to post?
>
> -Tim
>

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