• Some students struggle with APA's complex formatting requirements.typing image by Aditia Patria Warman from Fotolia.com
  
  Although the American Psychological Association (APA) method of formatting and citation is commonly used, it is also thoroughly debated and, by some people, intensely disliked. APA style helps writers configure their papers in a scholarly manner and cite their sources in a standardized layout, but it also provides its own challenges, irritations and shortcomings. Accordingly, some scholars prefer other style guides.
  
  

Limited Scope

• Although APA style is appropriate for a broad range of subjects, it is only one of many formatting guides, and it is limited to the behavioral and social sciences. If you used APA style in the liberal arts, the sciences, the field of law, the humanities, literature, history or the arts, then your paper would probably be incorrectly formatted.
  
  

Complexity and Difficulty of Use

• Many students struggle with APA style, which involves some complicated formatting and hence requires relatively advanced word processing skills. For example, setting up the page header, which must be different on the first page (except the page numbers, which must proceed seamlessly), can be challenging. Additionally, the bibliographic entries sometimes seem unnatural: For example, the year of publication must be placed in parentheses, and then the parentheses must be followed by a period, even though there are no elements other than the parenthetical date since the previous period.
  
  

Interruptions of Parenthetical References

• Parenthetical references, in which sources are cited within sentences in the body of the paper, can interrupt the flow of the primary text. Accordingly, as MIT's Advanced Writing Seminar notes, using a system of footnotes or endnotes can minimize interruption and maximize efficiency.
  
  

Inefficiency of Alphabetized Bibliography

• Many professionals---such as Eugene Garfield, chairman emeritus of the Institute for Scientific Information---dislike APA's alphabetized reference list and its corresponding parenthetical citations, claiming it wastes time and is inefficient. They argue that a numerical system of notes and a numbered bibliography makes it easier to match in-text citations with bibliographic entries.