Changing to apa-style destroys document structure

Question

I am trying to change the citation style from "acm" to "apa" and I can't figure it out. I already googled and looked in this forum and tried to apply the presented solutions but it is still not working properly. Changing back to acm solves the problems with the tables and document structure.

This is the tex file:

\documentclass[oneside, a4paper, 12pt]{article} % Gibt an: Papierformat, Schriftgröße
\usepackage{thesis}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{array} %notwendig um neue Spaltentypen zu definieren
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{longtable}
%\usepackage{apacite}
%\usepackage[colorlinks=true, urlcolor=blue,linkcolor=green]{hyperref}
% Hier werden die Abkürzungen definiert. Sofern ein Abkürzungsverzeichnis verwendet wird bitte entkommentieren.
%\include{sections/acronyms}
\begin{document}
\setlanguageEnglish % Sprache einstellen.
% Hier kommt der ganze Vorspann. Bei Verwendung von Abkürzungs-, Abbildungs- oder Tabellenverzeichnisse bitte in dieser Datei entsprechend entkommentieren.
\include{Master Thesis/sections/preamble}
\include{Master Thesis/sections/section1}
\include{Master Thesis/sections/section2}
\include{Master Thesis/sections/section3}
\include{Master Thesis/sections/section4}
\include{Master Thesis/sections/section5}
\include{Master Thesis/sections/section6}
% Anhang / Appendix
\appendix % Ab hier wird mit A, B, ... weiternummeriert.
% Für den Fall eines Anhangs entkommentieren
\include{sections/appendix}
% Literaturverzeichnis
\bibliographystyle{acm} %apacite
\bibliography{YOUR_thesis} % Datei mit Literaturangaben einbinden
% Schriftliche Erklärung
\newpage
\include{sections/assertion}
\end{document}

The package thesis looks like this

\ProvidesPackage{thesis}[2009/11/03 v0.1 Styledefinitionen]
\setlength{\parskip}{0.2cm}
\setlength{\parindent}{0cm}
\setlength{\headheight}{15pt} %-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
%Einstellung der Randabstände
\usepackage[lmargin={2.5cm},rmargin={2.5cm},tmargin={2.5cm},bmargin={2.5cm}]{geometry}
%zur Einbindung von Graphiken
\usepackage{graphicx}
%Bearbeitung von Kopf- und Fusszeile
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
%Schriftart
\usepackage{helvet}
%stellt unabhängige Textmarken zu Verfügung
\usepackage{extramarks}
%aktiviert eine Umgebung in der der Mathematikmodus aktiv ist
\usepackage{amsmath}
%coole Zeichentools
\usepackage{tikz}\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta}
%aktiviert eine Umgebung in der der Mathematikmodus aktiv ist
\usepackage{amsthm}
%aktiviert eine Umgebung in der der Mathematikmodus aktiv ist
\usepackage{amssymb}
%aktiviert Hyperlinks
\usepackage{hyperref} 
%Stellt das Eurozeichen ? zu Verfügung
\usepackage[right]{eurosym}
\usepackage[ngerman,english]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}         % Nur einbinden, wenn LuaLatex nicht vorhanden!
\usepackage[acronyms,ucmark=true]{glossaries}
\makenoidxglossaries
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{framed}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{newclude}

I added "\usepackage{apacite} and \bibliographystyle{apastyle}" which did the trick for the format BUT:

When changing to apa my whole document structure is altered, so for example 2 clear pages are added after each section and my long tables don't work anymore. If I just delete \usepackage{apacite} and change the style back to acm everything works perfectly. What am I missing here? Is the package apacite somehow changing the overall document structure?

I do believe that there is just a minor thing missing which I can't find out. I would really appreciate your help on this one!

Thanks

Answer 1

You have two distinct options for conforming APA style options. It's also possible that you just need a generic author-year style (which is informally called APA style). See the following question for a fuller discussion.

• What is the relationship between natbib, apacite package, and apa document class?

Now to the actual options:

apacite

The apacite package provides conforming APA 6 citations and bibliography. It uses regular bibtex to process the bibliography. It can use natbib citation commands. You need to do two things:

\usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite} 
% remove `natbibapa` option if you don't want `natbib` citation commands
\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\begin{document}
...
\bibliography{your-bib-file}
\end{document}

Process your document using your regular latex engine (e.g. pdflatex) and bibtex.

The standard natbib citation commands are \citet to produce Author (Year), and \citep to produce (Author, Year).

biblatex-apa

The apa style of biblatex provides APA 7 conforming citations and bibliography. It can also provide APA 6 with the apa6 option. It requires biber to process the bibliography.

\usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{your-bib-file.bib}
\begin{document}
...
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Process your document using your regular latex engine (e.g. pdflatex) and biber.

The standard biblatex citation commands are \textcite to produce "Author (Year)" and \parencite to produce "(Author, Year)". You can add the natbib load option to also use the corresponding natbib commands \citet and \citep. The \cite command in the apa style is an alias for \parencite*, yielding "Author, Year" so you will need to change any plain \cite commands in your document to the correct command for the context.