I would not recommend purchasing this very limited resource. I bought it to avoid going online every time I needed to look something up, but found that nothing that I actually needed to look up was covered in this overly "concise" manual. I found everything I needed online for free.

For me, the jury is still out on the APA format. I have to use it for a class, otherwise I would stick with MLA. Regarding this reference guide, it is ok. The format is not intuitive, and I find myself going online to find examples of how to format citations more than I do opening this book.

Let's face it, nobody likes doing APA, but if you have to do it, this is the best tool around. It is portable and easily searched and covers all situations, no matter how archiaic.

This is an essential book if you're preparing papers that must follow APA style. It's official from APA, so you can count on the content. More detailed than a quick guide. The spiral binding makes it easy to use. If my 'easy way' guide doesn't have the answer, this concise guide does. Wouldn't be without it. Why didn't my uni profs tell me about this cheaper resource??? (The full-length guide costs about twice as much, if I remember correctly.)

This book is a little confusing. Never arrived when ordered first. I had to reorder this item which finally arrived two months late.

I thought this would be a more helpful book than the APA Publication Manual, but I was wrong. This small volume does not cover enough items that I need to write a graduate level paper. I suggest purchasing only the Publication Manual.

good reference for research papers, only wished it had better examples easier to locate instead of having to read every chapter to search for format.

This book is a great reference for the college student that is trying to figure out the APA Referencing Rules.

I found the book very helpful but complex. I rated it a four because it is accurate, absolutely correct. I had hoped it would simplify the process but found that other sites or reference material much simpler to understand for a first year student. It is a great guide!

Hopefully this statement will help those of you who are trying to decide what to buy: If you do not own a full copy of the APA Publication Manual, then do not buy this book. This book is meant to be a pocket-sized reference guide that you can carry with you. It is meant as a supplement, but it is not the primary resource -- the APA Publication Manual is the primary resource.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, here is my review: This book may have omitted a few things that I would have preferred they left in (you won't know what you need until you need it). But by and large they did a good job of condensing a large book into a pocket guide.

There's no rules for title pages, no examples of manuscript pages, no rules for pagination. It doesn't even tell you if the reference list belongs on a separate page or what its heading looks like. I consider these glaring omissions, particularly if you are expected to use pure APA and have no departmental style guide (like me). This book is basically a glorified guide to citation and syntactic rules. Avoid it and pay the extra five bucks for the complete book. Getting the cheap book as some kind of protest won't signficantly hurt the APA and it will just make things harder for you.

While this is a great condensation of the main rules needed to write in APA style, this book lacks one major thing -- the practical examples of how to apply APA style in a document or manuscript.

The book would be greatly enhanced if in future editions the editors added the examples that are found in the full APA guidelines handbook.

It was too condensed. I needed more information than the book provided.

There is not much rating that can be done with a reference book such as this. It gives the APA Rules in concise fashion just like it promises. The Reference citing examples are very thorough. It gives the rules on headings as well as how things like numbers, abbreviations, quotes, and other rules of citing in text should be done. It is small and handy enough to keep near the computer. I love it and don't see any reason why anyone needs the big manual if they have this. It lists all the rules only, so if you are looking for a sample of a whole paper, you will not find it here.

Some peopel may find this book useful. I am just begining to learn the APA format and I did not find this book to be user friendly. I have had better information given to me from handouts from other books.

The first question you'd have to ask about this book is Why would the American Psychological Association have a style guide.

The answer is that the APA Style is the definitive guide to the style that the APA wants to see in their publications and this style is also used by a number of other publications that have adopted the APA Style.

Among the critical points of the APA Style is how to construct an error-free reference list crediting all sources properly and avoiding all charges of plagiarism. This has become extremely critical in today's world where any research seems subject to actively looking for any way they can discredit someone else rather than do their own work.

In addition the style book is an authoritative guide to how best to present the ideas and data that is so hard to gather. Being able to present data in a way that is understandable to the reader is perhaps the most difficult yet the most important part of writing a paper.

This book is the concise version. It is a small format book designed to be convenient, portable and yet complete.