The APA style of writing is one of the standard guidelines, and an essential element for all academic and professional endeavors that is used to create precise and clear writings in an organized, uniform and consistent way by authors and for authors as well as for all types of students in order to achieve excellence in scholarly writing (American Psychological Association, [APA]. (2020). Citations is the system of informing your readers that you have used ideas from other sources by acknowledging those authors and by providing the link so that the readers could have direct assess to the particular sources you used, if they want to look further. This system prevents the writer from plagiarizing the author’s work and it also helps to lend credibility to your work showing that other authors have thought about the same topic (Limestone University, 2022). You only cite author’s that has influenced you and you have borrowed their ideas and theories and included them in your work (APA, 2020). References are the detailed list of the citations of articles, journals or books of others that was used to write one’s paper or work (University of Birmingham, 2022). Using citations and references shows your credibility and that you are not taking over the work or words of someone else. It helps you to avoid plagiarism which is the act of using another author’s words/work without acknowledging them. When you use citations and references, it helps you to avoid the serious consequence that could result from the lack of citation or referencing such as losing one’s credibility as a writer or an author, as a student, you may fail that class or be suspended or expelled from the school. Plagiarism is when a writer uses another author’s word without acknowledging them by citing and referencing them in that paper (APA, 2020).  It could be unintentional or intentional but there is no acceptable excuse (Purdue Writing Lab., (n.d.). Even if you quote an author, you still need to acknowledge them but it is best to summarize the work of another Author. A summary is a brief explanation of the main points of the borrowed author’s work and it should be shorter that the main work and not have quotation marks. When you summarize, it shows you have an understanding of the work (Purdue Writing Lab., (n.d.). Lopes write is a school resource that helps the student and teachers check their work to make sure that they do not have too many quotations from another’s work and that they have cited all the works they have used by encouraging proper citation. This helps to maintain the integrity of the student and the school and avoid plagiarism. It also gives the students feedback on their grammar, style and spelling error. After it checks the student’s paper through a variety of databases, it gives a similarity index of the work. The student is supposed to be below a certain percentage of similarity index (Grand Canyon University, (n.d.). This article by Hornnes & Poulsen (2020) have demonstrated through original primary research using randomized control trial of intervention and control of one of the risk factors of stroke recurrence like blood pressure (BP) to demonstrate that the reoccurrence of stroke can be reduced by 24%. The large study assessed 627 eligible participants then excluded 549 of which 424 did not meet the inclusion criteria and 41 declined participation and 84 gave no reasons. In the end 78 participants qualified with an equal number of 39 for interventions and 39 for control. But with the final analysis of the participants, they only had 73 participants 36 in interventions and 37 with controls (Hornnes, & Poulsen, 2020). The intervention participants came for 3-4 weeks visit at a dedicated preventive outpatient clinic while the control group went to their regular general practitioners after discharge and only the nurses and the physicians monitored their blood pressure. The study at the end showed that the timely intervention and follow up of stroke patients BP in a preventive clinic resulted in the control of their BP which may lead to delay of the reoccurrence of stroke, disability and possible death (Hornnes, & Poulsen, 2020).

References

American Psychological Association, (APA). (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association the official guide to APA style (7th ed.). American Psychological Association. Grand Canyon University. (n.d.). Lopes Write. Student success center.