Seeking trusted APA formatting resources for in-text citations and CI tables

[Patrick90]

I'm finishing my master's thesis in psychology and my advisor is very strict about perfect APA style formatting, but I keep getting tripped up on the specific rules for citing multiple sources within the same parentheses and how to format complex tables with confidence intervals. The official manual is dense, and online guides sometimes contradict each other. For fellow graduate students or academics who have mastered APA, what are your go-to resources or tricks for ensuring consistency, especially for references and tables, without having to manually check every single detail?

[Gary_G]

Two quick, practical tips to start: 1) use APA 7 guidelines as a baseline and lean on a reference manager to automate citations; 2) when citing multiple sources in one parenthesis, order alphabetically by the first author's surname and separate with semicolons (e.g., (Brown, 2019; Smith, 2020)). If multiple works by the same author in the same year, add '2020a' and '2020b' etc. for clarity.

[GraceAT]

Go-to resources for dependable APA guidance: the APA Style Blog and Purdue OWL for concrete examples; The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed) as the canonical source; for tables and numbers, use the APA style quick reference on tables/figures and the university library guides. If possible, a librarian or writing center can help with tricky edge cases.

[Lily_J]

Tooling and workflow that keeps you sane: use Zotero or EndNote to auto-generate in-text citations and reference lists, and set your word processor to APA 7th edition formatting. For tables, craft a clean template in Word (or LaTeX with tabularx), ensure table titles and numbers appear above the table, then add a concise Notes section below for sources and clarifications. When you present confidence intervals, format as something like 0.42 (95% CI [0.32, 0.54]).

[Ryan.J]

Common table pitfalls to check before submission: ensure consistent numeric alignment and decimal places, include DOIs where available, cite all data sources in the notes, and provide a brief table note explaining any abbreviations or methods. Keep the table simple and avoid unnecessary gridlines; use horizontal rules sparingly and rely on clean typography.

[Jacob.P]

Two-week quick-start plan: 1) collect all sources and set up an APA style library in a reference manager; 2) draft a single 'template' table (title, column headers, notes) and format a sample table with a CI; 3) run a final pass with Purdue/OAL guidelines and run a quick audit with a library staff or writing tutor. If you’d like, tell me what software you’re using and I’ll tailor a concrete 1-page cheat sheet.