APA style inserts citations using parenthetical references. Following quoted or paraphrased material, APA requires the writer to insert the surname(s) of the author(s) along with the year of publication. This information is contained in parentheses to separate it from the rest of the text. These types of citations, especially when lengthy, can be disruptive to the reading process. The reader's attention is momentarily taken away from the flow of the paper, due to the embedded citations.
The author, date format of parenthetical references in APA style is another aspect that may make communication of information more difficult in an academic paper. In other citation styles, such as Turabian or Chicago, the footnote contains the author's name as well as the title of the text. In APA, however, the author's name is followed by the date of the text's publication. The absence of the title of the cited text may be less helpful to the reader, since the relevancy and notoriety of a text's title conveys additional information.
Another potential pitfall associated with APA is also considered to be a strength of the style in the eyes of some scholars. APA style uses headings to create distinctive sections within a paper. While this is useful for helping the writer to organize information, it may be a hindrance to true academic communication, since the reader may be tempted to skip various sections. For instance, in a social science paper detailing a survey conducted, a reader might be tempted to read only the introduction and conclusion of the paper, skipping other sections outlining the procedure. While this saves time for the reader, it may mean a reduced understanding of the experiment and the paper.
Finally, APA uses subtle formatting cues to convey information in the paper. Things like the size, alignment and font of a heading convey its hierarchical ranking in the paper. For instance, Level 1 and Level 2 headings in APA format are differentiated only by their positioning on the page: Level 1 headings are centered whereas Level 2 headings are left-aligned. If the reader is unfamiliar with APA, the information conveyed by such subtle formatting may be lost.