apa 7th edition

Maybe I should go with a typewriter, then, or a fountain pen and paper, or parchment and a quill. Microsoft makes their products available for free to many universities, knowing that those students will graduate and possibly become paying customers for the rest of their lives. This_could_not_have been that big a patch - why didn't the APA work with them ahead of time?

My semester ends tomorrow. My citation management software (Zotero) has updated to APA 7th. However, Microsoft didn't get the freaking memo and now I'm wondering if anything weird is going to happen when I finish my edits and submit my work today. I'm going to look at GDocs and Pages to see if they've updated the template to APA 7 and then finish the paper in one of those formats, save as MS Word and PDF, and then submit so if Word is wonky I'll have the PDF as proof of my work.

Um, is there another "ambassador" with working knowledge of academic templates in Word somewhere?

will apa 7th edition automatically download when available?  or how do i get it?

YES.

Wait ... until MS feels like rolling it out

Suzanne is the best Word source we have on the forum. She actually has contacts inside MS. So if she doesn't know, that's it.

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This is an ongoing problem with in Word and the various "Official" formatting Style Guides. Every time a Style guide is updated, it takes years for MS to catch up. But in the mean time there are millions of students who use Word and whose school expects them to use the newest version. But there is the disconnect between the teacher's (unrealistic) expectation and Word automation. Students have the option of:

.  *  using the out of date Word automation and losing marks, but working faster

.  *  using the out of date automation and trying to manually tweak it (time consuming)

.  *  ignoring Word automation and doing all citations manually

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Frankly I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. It may show up in Word 2022/2023 when ever the new version of Word comes out. That sort of thing is at the bottom of MS's priority pile.  It took 2 or 3 years for APA 6 to show up in Word.

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If you want to get it faster there are a few things you can do

.  *  (Fastest) learn the Style guide specific XML and code the changes yourself (I can provide a couple of learning links ... )

.  *  Submit a new feature request to MS via "Feedback"

.  *  get all students and staff to vote for it (ie make voting a class requirement!)

.  *  get the school IT department to put in an official support request for it

.  *  get the State / Provincial / Federal Bored <sic> of Education to submit the request

.  *  have a school official contact the APA, tell them to submit an official request to MS.

.  *  (Best) Suggest to the APA that they work with MS to make this happen faster

Yes, the "fastest" suggestion is least likely to happen. Learning and writing the XML to meet the rules in the style guide will not be fast or easy.

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I think the last suggestion is the "best" because the APA formatting rules are complex. It is unrealistic to expect MS to be enthusiastic about having one or more of their programmers learn the minutia of the new rule changes.  On the other hand, if the APA is willing to work with MS, providing an APA 7 expert to work with the MS programmer, then MS is more likely to do the project sooner. And if the APA is willing to pay MS expenses for the project it will happen even faster.

I’ve been in that situation. I wrote an in-house application. We had a bunch of updates that needed doing. The only way they were done was when we sold the application to an external company. The sale was contingent on us making those change, the sale price paid for the work to be done. It was a Win-Win-Win situation.

An alternative (that I as an individual have already suggested to the APA) is that they pay to hire a contractor to create the new XML code to their specifications. They could then either submit the new code to MS for review, testing and implementation, AND/OR they could provide the XML as a download on the APA website. Make it a free download, independent of buying the style guide so EVERYONE who needs to use it, at work in the "real world" and students would have soonest access to the newest iteration.

In an ideal world, after creating the Code, the APA would make it an ongoing project to keep the code up to date as the style is updated. That way, when the next major version of the style guide comes out, MS could release it as an update to Word AT THE SAME TIME as the new style guide is released. That would be cool for users. And a real advantage over other style guides, who would have to wait for MS ...

No one in this forum can answer that question. I doubt that anyone at Microsoft can answer that question because it's probably not on their radar.