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A in-text citation refers to works of others in your writing by putting relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or paraphrase.
Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Reference page. In other words, whatever word you use for the in-text, must be the first thing that appears in the Reference entry on the Reference page.
Short quotations
If you are quoting directly from the text, you will need to include the author, year of publication, and the page number for the reference (preceded by "p."). Put the author's last name followed by the date of publication in parentheses at the beginning of the quote and the page number at the end.
Examples:
According to Jones (1998), "Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time" (p. 199).
Jones (1998) found "students often had difficulty using APA style" (p. 199); what implications does this have for teachers?
You can also place the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page number in parentheses after the quotation.
Example:
She stated, "Students often had difficulty using APA style" (Jones, 1998, p. 199), but she did not offer an explanation as to why.
Longer quotations are 40 words or longer and should be cited differently. Use a free-standing block and do not use quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, indented 1/2 inch from the left margin. (This is the same place you would begin a new paragraph.) Type the entire quotation at that location 1/2 inch from the left margin. Continue double-spacing in the quotation. The citation should come after the closing punctuation mark.
Example:
Jones's (1998) study found the following:
Students often had difficulty using APA style,
especially when it was their first time citing sources.
This difficulty could be attributed to the fact that many
students failed to purchase a style manual or to ask
their teacher for help. (p. 199)
If you are paraphrasing an idea from someone else's work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication in the in-text citation. However, the APA guidelines encourage you to also include the page number (even though it is not required).
Example:
According to Jones (1998), APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners.
APA style is a difficult format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998, p. 199).
(This information was obtained from the OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab To get specific information about how to create other in-text citations, visit their website.)
Work by One Author
The APA manual recommends the use of the author-date citation structure for in-text citation references. This structure requires that any in-text citation (i.e., within the body of the text) be accompanied by a corresponding reference list entry. In the in-text citation provide the surname of the author but do not include suffixes such as "Jr.".
Example:
As Ahmed (2016) mentions...
(Ahmed, 2016)
Work by Two Authors
Name both authors in the signal phrase or in parentheses each time you cite the work. Use the word "and" between the authors' names within the text and use the ampersand in parentheses.
Research by Wegener and Petty (1994) supports...
(Wegener & Petty, 1994)
Work by Three or More Authors
List only the first author’s name followed by “et al.” in every citation, even the first, unless doing so would create ambiguity between different sources.
(Kernis et al., 1993)
Kernis et al. (1993) suggest...
(This information was obtained from the OWL Purdue Online Writing Lab To get specific information about how to create other in-text citations, visit their website.)
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