Academic English Writing Common Errors — APA & Compliance

學術英文寫作常見錯誤 Tilburg University

3 min readOct 7, 2022

The content of these notes is partly from the CIS Premaster Academic English Course of Tilburg University. The instructor is Dr. Simone Ashby & Diana Schmalzried (coordinator). Please inform me if there is any copyright infringement.

這篇文章會講到學術英文在「論文APA規範」的部分的寫作常見錯誤，希望對一些在外奮鬥的中文母語者有點幫助。這些筆記的內容部分來自蒂爾堡大學的CIS Premaster 學術英文課程，講師是 Simone Ashby 和 Diana Schmalzried。純粹教育目的並無盈利，如有侵權請告知。

APA Reference list

A reference list is missing 在文中不可以缺少參考文獻列表，這會導致很嚴重的後果
In-text references are missing from the reference list 參考文獻列表中缺少文本參考。也就是說，你在引文中標了一個參考，在尾巴的reference 卻忘記放，這是不被允許的。
References are inappropriately alphabetized 參考文獻要正確的按字母順序排列
Lack of italics in publication titles 書名一定要用斜體！書名包含書籍、電影、戲劇、廣播和電視節目、藝術作品、音樂收藏、報紙和期刊等等。
e.g., Garcon, A. H., & Guerrero, N. S. (2020, May). Evaluating the Impact of Digital Content on Consumers’ Practices: The Phenomenon of Cooking Videos. Lund University.
Lack of an ampersand (&) or comma before the last author-name
最後一個作者姓名前缺少 (&)或是逗號，正確來說應該是「A, B, C, & D」
e.g., Tanenbaum, T. J., Pufal, M., Tanenbaum, & K. (2016) […]
Confusing institutions and online portals with publications/authors 將學術機構或網站的入口名稱當作出版品或作者。Research gate 不是期刊名稱，不應出現在文獻列表中（這有可能發生嘛？？）
(note: Researchgate is not a journal name and should not appear in your bibliographic entries)
Improper indentation不正確的引用，這個要看其他範例。
Obvious use of a citation generator 濫用citation 生成器大概會產生底下的東東。
e.g., Aalbers, G., vanden Abeele, M. M. P., Hendrickson, A. T., de Marez, L., & Keijsers, L. (2021b, March 5).

In-text citations（文內引用/文內註）

Misplacement of the year when citing work by multiple authors 引用多位作者的著作時的年份錯位。第一次文內引用時需列全部作者，之後引用相同的只需舉出最主要的作者再加上“et al.”。底下這個範例應該要在Sobue’s et al.後方，但將(2019)誤植到guideliine後方。
e.g., “Sobue’s et al. cooking videos guideline (2019)…”
Inappropriate use of a secondary citation 不恰當地使用二次引用。照理來說應該是要一直追朔到原始文獻比較恰當。我找到一篇文章在講述二次引用，也是可以用換句話說的方式寫。

**圖源：**https://www.zhihu.com/question/22086839

Misuse of the ampersand (&) in a non-bracketed in-text reference 不要在非括號內的文內註用 (&)
e.g., “Mission statements, according to Fox & McIntyre (2001), are the foundations for developing a nonprofit’s communication structures […]”
Not using the ampersand (&) in a bracketed in-text reference 沒有在括號內的文獻中使用 (and > &)
e.g., “…allowing for reflective and generative thinking (Daiute and Dalton, 1993).”

Numeric references 序數，何時用123，何時用 one, two, three？

one, two, three書寫：一到兩個單詞的數、取整的數、序數、數字位於句首
e.g., “The country had been at war for twenty-five years. (number under 100)”
使用阿拉伯數字書寫：大於一百的數與以下情況中的數字或特定單位（錢、度量）
e.g., “Use digits for exact amounts (e.g. $24.28), but use digits and words for rounded and large amounts (e.g. 98 dollars; $15 million).”

上面的例子取自這篇數字規範，整理得滿好的：https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/102149479

Quotations 引號

Missing page numbers for quotations 引文的頁碼缺失
e.g., “There are different aspects of smartphone use that could potentially relate to procrastination” (Aalbers et al., 2021)”
Misuse of single quotation marks 濫用單引號，在 APA 格式中，單引號僅用於引號(“”)內
e.g., “‘There are different aspects of smartphone use that could potentially relate to procrastination’ (Aalbers et al., 2021, p. 118).”