In-Text Citations

Listing our source material in the References page of our paper is only half the job of crediting the work of others. The other half is adding text within the body of our paper that points to the corresponding references. This is called citing our source – and the text we include in our paper to do that is called an in-text citation.

When to Use Citations

If you remember our earlier lesson on what to cite, you know it’s critically important to give credit when we use someone else’s ideas. In APA, we do that immediately after we’ve used their information or idea in our paper – whether we’ve quoted directly or paraphrased it in our own words.

If you quote something, place the citation immediately after the quote.
If you paraphrase a source over a few sentences, add the citation at the end of the paraphrase.

This helps our readers see where our information came from and ensures we aren’t plagiarizing.

What an APA In-Text Citation Looks Like

In the APA style, we cite our sources using Parenthetical citations. This is where all the info goes inside parentheses at the end of a sentence directly before the closing punctuation.

Sasquatches migrate “seasonally across mountain ranges” (Meldrum, 2007).

Basic Citation Format

For most APA citations, here’s what we include:

• Author’s last name
  
  
• Year of publication
  
  
• Page number or location in the work, if quoting from the reference directly

All of this goes inside parentheses (for parenthetical citations), separated by commas.

Example with a quote:

“The evidence is compelling” (Meldrum, 2007, p. 47).

Note: For quotations in our text, the citation comes after the closing quotation mark, but before the period.

If you’re quoting text across a page range, use an en dash (–) between the pages like this:

(Meldrum, 2007, pp. 47–49)

If you’re citing something without a specific page or location, like a website, or you’re citing a general idea from a work, you can leave the page number off:

(Lin, 2022)

Multiple Authors

If your source has two authors, you include the last names of both authors with an ampersand between:

(Strange & Weber, 2020)

If your source has three or more authors, APA 7 makes it easy:

Just use the first author’s last name followed by et al. – for every citation, even the first one.
(Nguyen et al., 2021)
(Davis et al., n.d.)

Don’t italicize et al., and don’t put a comma before it.

No Author?

If your source doesn’t have a named author, check if there’s an organizational author (like a government agency or company). If so, use that.

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023)

If there’s no author at all, use the title of the work instead. If the title was italicized in the reference (like book titles and webpages), then italicize it in the citation. If the title was not italicized in the reference (like journal articles), then put the title in double quotation marks in the citation.

Just to make things fun, the APA requires all titles in citations to be title cased – even if they’re sentence cased in the reference.

("Cryptid Migrations," 2022)
(Sasquatch Studies, 2020)

If the title is very long, you can shorten it to a recognizable length in the citation.

What If the Author is Already in My Sentence?

If you name the author or the publication date as part of your sentence, you don’t need to repeat it in the citation. Just include the remaining parts – and the page number if needed. This is called a Narrative Citation.

Lin (2022) explores migration patterns...
According to Lin (2022), “the findings were inconclusive” (p. 12).

Citing Multiple Sources in One Sentence

If you’re citing two or more references for the same idea, include all the citations in one set of parentheses. Separate them with semicolons, and put them in alphabetical order (as they appear in your reference list).

(Clifton, 2015; Strange & Weber, 2020)

Final Thoughts

OK, that’s a lot but you’ve made it through the toughest parts of APA: references & 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 publication year
  
  
• Include page numbers if quoting

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