OP On Why APA Is The Worst And What Everyone Should Know

Other styles might have their own tiny, obtrusive rules that you need to be mindful of, but the one I need to use most is APA and so I’m going to write (whine) about it. APA is the Arguably Poor and Awful formatting style used in many of the social sciences and liberal arts classes when writing papers. 

I was going to introduce this in a more responsible/well-mannered way, but to hell with it. Fuck APA formatting. Did you know there are three different hyphens and rules on how and when to use them? I didn’t and let me tell you, you can definitely lose marks on using the wrong hyphen. One hyphen is the regular hyphen, the second is an N hyphen (because it’s as long as the letter N) and the last is the M hyphen (for the same reason). Each one has its use and if you mix them up… you’re fucked. And tough luck if the URL you’ve copied has the wrong one in it. 

Or how about page numbers? I bet you haven’t checked what automatic typeface you are using on your page numbers, because it might not be Times New Roman, and if you forget something like that… Yep, you’ll lose some marks. 

Double spacing after periods that are before another sentence is just plain stupid. Where do you get off APA?

There’s a way in APA to cite the back of a Cracker Jack box. If you are citing information from a candy box, perhaps academia is not for you. 

You can use ampersands (&) when sourcing more than one author but in almost no other place is this acceptable. Fuck you APA. It’s my ampersand and I will sprinkle it liberally through the entirety of my paper, including titles, page numbers, and use it instead of quotation marks if I damn well want. I will change my legal name to & if I have to. 

The alleged purpose of APA is to standardize writing papers while also making them easier to read. Instead what happens is I fly into an apoplectic rage when I lose marks in the Running Head and how it is not all capitalized except for the words ‘Running head’, but not the ‘h’, for… reasons? Confused? Too bad. APA doesn’t care about your feelings.

Fuck you APA. You’re the worst.