APA STYLE – QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the APA style, which has been used since 2017 in the design of citations, references, lists of used literature in dissertations and scientific publications in Ukraine. The normative documents of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, which contributed to the spread of APA style in modern Ukrainian science, are analyzed; some problems of APA style application and its separate elements in registration of dissertations and scientific publications in Ukraine are revealed and revealed. APA style is an independent style of design of scientific publications, created for use in the English-speaking scientific environment. It contains: recommendations for the design of scientific work (font, margins, paragraph, placement of text on the page); rules for the use of writing and grammar style (language recommendations, spelling, principles of word transfer, abbreviations, use of capital letters); rules of punctuation, italics and quotation marks; rules of registration of applications (tables and figures); rules of registration of quotations and references in the text; compiling a bibliographic description, rules for compiling a “List of references”, etc. The first problem is that the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine for the dissertation contradict the use of some elements of the design of scientific papers in the style of APA. The second problem is that in the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science for the design of dissertations there are no clear instructions on compliance with the rules of citation, reference and compilation of the list of used literature in the style of APA. The third problem is that when designing dissertations, the author can choose to use other elements of the APA style that do not contradict the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science. The fourth problem is the use of the APA style in an element called “reference” in the design of scientific articles. “Reference” is a transliterated version of the list of used literature from Cyrillic to Latin, but its compilation is carried out without following the rules of the APA style. Accordingly, out of the whole style of APA, its separate elements were introduced into scientific circulation in Ukraine – bibliographic description, citations, references, transliteration. Active use of APA-style bibliographic description in the preparation of the list of used literature in dissertations and scientific articles has led to the stereotypical perception of APA style as a kind of bibliographic description, rather than a full-fledged style of scientific work