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Level 3

The APA paper

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Deep Diving to Academic Writing:

Purpose of assignment:

• To rewrite the Anti-Science paper with clinical clarity into a APA tone and style
• We are not worrying about sources or citations in this paper
• This paper solely focuses on language use.

Clinically Clear Language

• The easiest way to think in the APA style of writing is to read everything as being explicitly literal.

1. Remove Yourself
   1. 1. Do not use these words: you, I, my, myself, we, and us.
   2. 2. Remove gendered terms, such as his or hers when talking about someone's article.
   3. 3. Using "they" is now acceptable to use when referring to one person
2. Remove hyperbolic language: (subjective adjectives and adverbs)
   Example:
   • Subjective: Very heavy object
   • "Very" cannot be qualified, when is something heavy, and at what exact point does that object become "very" heavy.
   • Subjective: Heavy object
   • "Heavy" is not provable. Something that I think is heavy may not be so to you; thus, "heavy" is subjective.
3. Remove subjective observations
   • Which part of this sentence is subjective:
   • It was a hot, sunny, and beautiful day. Sunny is not subjective; it's fine to say. We can look at weather reports and verify that, yes, it was indeed sunny that day. Many people, like me, see rainy days as beautiful and sunny days as oppressive, so that word "beautiful" is subjective and must be removed. Hot also can be verified by weather reports. Hot may seem subjective, but OSHA has guidelines on what is hot and cold to the average person.
4. Remove Phrasals
   • Scan this list of Phrasals; they are a problem for most world-wide English speakers because they never mean the literal words.
   • Example
   • He turned on his boss.
5. Remove Cliches
   • Cliches are only understood by someone within the culture of the cliche.
   • Interpret these by using the literal definition of each word, which is how world-wide English speakers must interpret them
     • Kiss and make up (means to reconcile grievances with someone) but literally means something like this: Put your lips on someone in a kissing motion and ...acquire some cosmetics? uh...what?
     • Read between the lines (Means there's a hidden meaning in what's not being said) How? there is quite literally NOTHING between the lines on the paper
     • Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed (meaning, you're grumpy!) Beds in America have correct sides and wrong sides? Which side is the wrong one? What makes that side the wrong one?
6. Remove Americanisms
   • Writing in APA is to write to the world-wide scientific community, which means writing to a world-wide English
   • That is, writing to all 1.5 Billion world-wide English speakers, most of whom speak the correct form of English.
   • Only 350 million of those speakers are Americans.
   • Who gets to say whose English is correct? Well, if we go by America's idea of majority rule, and considering that the majority of English speakers don't speak American-English, variants on British-English is correct.
     • Example
     • Sharon said,"I don't know, Joe's going on and on about getting that dog over here so it can get its medication."
     • That sentence is a nightmare to world-wide English speakers.
     • "I don't comprehend. Joe is travelling from one place to another many times, or climbing onto something many times, so that a dog that is already near Sharon can travel a distance and acquire some medication."
     • Edit for world-wide: Sharon said, "I think what Joe wants is for us to bring the dog to him so Joe can give the dog some medication.
7. Impossible Agents
   • Impossible agents are when we accidentally give life and the power to inanimate objects and ideas.
     • Example 1
     • Covid spread quickly between people who did not honor social distancing.
     • 1. Covid can't spread itself. People spread covid.
     • 2. You can honor your ancestors, but how do we honor social distancing? That's too poetic.
     • Edit: People who would not utilize social distancing increased the chances of them spreading Covid to others.
     • Example 2
     • Many businesses closed to stop the spread of Covid.
     • Literally, this means that businesses (and not the people who own them) closed themselves and that is all that was needed to stop the spread of covid.
     • Edit: To help slow the spread of Covid, business owners complied with state regulations and closed their places of business.