APA! What is APA? APA is an abbreviation that stands for “American Psychological Association”. People that may not know the word APA might feel as if it’s something that doesn’t really have a grand meaning, but others that do, know it has an extravagant value. APA Style was created by a group of social scientists who wanted to establish sound standards of communication eighty years ago. Ever since, many leaders in various fields have been utilizing this format. For instance, nursing, education, anthropology, and even Contemporary English textbooks. As a result of its universal presence in the landscape of research and scientific publishing, APA style manages to categorize the writing practices of a large discourse community.
The formation of APA was created when a quarrel between Edward B. Tichener, head of Cornell University’s psychology laboratory, and James McKeen Cattell, editor of monthly Scientific and Psychological Review took place. Their arguments were about the tension in the field between the editor’s desire for a neat, dependable, standard product and idealist desire for particular expression and creativity among individuals. The first set of standards were the result of a historically specific phenomenon that psychologists described as “information overload” by Blair around the year of 2003. Due to this explosion in research being produced. For psychology, it was only in the 1920s, the APA Format was experiencing the “growing pains” of professionalization.
Along with the dramatic increase in membership, and an ever-widening definition of the topics and methods that defined what meant to be a psychologist. Psychology was no longer just a scientific discipline confined to the laboratory and the solitude of the Ivory Tower, instead, became an applied, helping profession with more practical implications. As a consequence of this, journal editors only had to manage a handful of submissions from individuals they often knew