Listing a source on your references page is only half the job of crediting someone else's work. The other half is adding a pointer in the body of your paper to the matching reference. That's called citing the source, and the pointer is an in-text citation.
When to use a citation
As the lesson on what to cite explained, it's critically important to give credit when you use someone else's ideas. In APA, you do that right after you use their information or idea, whether you quoted it directly or paraphrased it in your own words.
- If you quote something, put the citation right after the quote.
- If you paraphrase a source over a few sentences, put the citation at the end of the paraphrase.
That shows your reader where your information came from, and it keeps you clear of plagiarism.
What an APA in-text citation looks like
The most common APA citation is the parenthetical citation: the details go inside parentheses at the end of the sentence, just before the closing period.
Bigfoot evidence ranges from footprints and film to hair and DNA (Meldrum, 2007).
The basic format
Most APA citations include:
- The author's last name
- The year of publication
- The page number or location in the work, when you quote it directly
In a parenthetical citation, all of it goes inside the parentheses, separated by commas. Here it is with a quote:
The authors note that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (Sykes et al., 2014, p. 3).
Note: with a quotation, the citation comes after the closing quotation mark and before the period.
If the passage you use spans more than one page, put an en dash (–) between the page numbers:
(Lozier et al., 2009, pp. 1625–1626)
If you're citing something with no page or location, like a webpage, or citing the general idea of a work, leave the page number off:
(Lin, 2022)
Two or more authors
For a source with two authors, give both last names with an ampersand between them:
(Strange & Weber, 2020)
For three or more authors, APA 7 makes it easy: use the first author's last name followed by et al., in every citation, including the first one.
(Nguyen et al., 2021)
(Davis et al., n.d.)
Don't italicize et al. in your paper, and don't put a comma before it.
No author?
If a source has no named person as its author, check for a group author, like a government agency or a company. If there is one, use it:
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023)
If there's no author at all, use the title of the work instead. If the title is italicized in the reference, as book and webpage titles are, italicize it in the citation. If it isn't italicized in the reference, as with a journal article, put it in double quotation marks.
And to keep things interesting, APA puts every title in a citation in Title Case, even when the reference uses sentence case.
("Cryptid Migrations," 2022)
(Sasquatch Studies, 2020)
A very long title can be shortened to its first few words in the citation.
What if the author is already in my sentence?
If you name the author as part of your sentence, don't repeat the name in the citation. Put the year in parentheses right after the name, and add the page number at the end if you quote. This is called a narrative citation.
Lin (2022) explores migration patterns…
According to Lin (2022), "the findings were inconclusive" (p. 12).
Citing two or more sources at once
If you cite two or more references for the same idea, put them all inside one set of parentheses. Separate them with semicolons, in alphabetical order, the same order they appear in your reference list.
(Clifton, 2015; Strange & Weber, 2020)
Citations on a real page
Here are three of these forms working together on page 2 of the sample Bigfoot paper.
Hair offered as proof of Bigfoot keeps matching animals we already know (Sykes et al., 2014).
Sykes et al. (2014) tested 30 hairs credited to Bigfoot and similar creatures.
Lozier et al. (2009) reached a similar conclusion about sightings: “we nonetheless suspect that many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears” (p. 1626).
- ParentheticalAuthor and year inside the parentheses, before the period. Five authors, so et al. from the first citation.
- NarrativeThe authors are named in the sentence, with the year right after them.
- A quoteThe authors are already named, so the citation after the quote holds only the page.
The short version
That's a lot, but you've made it through the toughest parts of APA: references and in-text citations. Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. The most important things to remember:
- Cite your source every time you use it, whether you quote or paraphrase
- Use the author's last name and the year of publication
- Include the page number when you quote
How PERRLA handles citations
In PERRLA, you cite as you write. Type an opening parenthesis in an APA paper and the citation picker opens at your cursor. Pick the source, add a page number for a quote, and the citation lands in the right form, et al. and all. The references page updates itself from what you cite.
…such as a black bear or a cow (Sykes et al., 2014).
With a direct quote, the page too: (Sykes et al., 2014, p. 3).
Type an opening parenthesis and pick the source. Author, year, and page land in the right order, and three or more authors become et al. from the first citation.