Published on November 4, 2020 by Raimo Streefkerk . Revised on September 5, 2024.
In-text citations briefly identify the source of information in the body text. They correspond to a full reference entry at the end of your paper.
APA in-text citations consist of the author’s last name and publication year. When citing a specific part of a source, also include a page number or range, for example (Parker, 2020, p. 67) or (Johnson, 2017, pp. 39–41) .
Run a quick check to see how many APA citation errors your paper contains before submitting your work.
Apa in-text citations explained in 4 minutes, parenthetical vs. narrative citations, apa in-text citations with multiple authors, no author, date or page number, multiple sources in one parenthesis, avoiding ambiguity in apa in-text citations, citing indirect sources (“as cited in”), citing personal communication, general mentions of websites and software, example paragraph with in-text citations, frequently asked questions.
The in-text citation can be placed in parentheses or naturally integrated into a sentence.
The publication year appears directly after the author’s name when using the narrative format. The parenthetical citation can be placed within or at the end of a sentence, just before the period. Check out a full example paragraph with in-text citations .
Every source you reference in your writing should be accompanied by an accurate APA citation. Our plagiarism checker can help ensure your paper contains appropriate author attributions.
If a work has two authors, separate their names with an ampersand (&) in a parenthetical citation or “and” in a narrative citation. If there are three or more authors, only include the first author’s last name followed by “et al.”, meaning “and others”.
Group authors known by their abbreviations (e.g., CDC) are written in full the first time and are abbreviated in subsequent citations.
Author type | Parenthetical | Narrative |
---|---|---|
One author | (Harris, 2020) | Harris (2020) |
Two authors | (Harris & Cook, 2020) | Harris and Cook (2020) |
Three or more authors | (Harris et al., 2020) | Harris et al. (2020) |
Group authors | (Scribbr, 2020) | Scribbr (2020) |
Abbreviated group author | (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020) (CDC, 2020) | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2020) CDC (2020) |
Unknown element | Solution | In-text citation |
---|---|---|
Author | Use the source title. | ( , 2020) |
Date | Write “n.d.” for “no date”. | (Harris, n.d.) |
Page number | Use an alternative locator or omit the page number. | (Harris, 2020, 03:46) or (Harris, 2020) |
If the author of a source is unknown, try to determine if there is an organization or government responsible for creating the content. If so, include its name in the in-text citation (and reference entry).
Alternatively, use the source title in place of the author. Italicize the title if it’s italicized in the reference entry (except for court cases , which are italicized in the in-text citation but not the reference entry). Otherwise, enclose it in double quotation marks.
Apply title case capitalization, and shorten long titles. The first word of the title should always be included so readers can easily locate the corresponding reference entry.
If the publication date is unknown, write “n.d.” (no date) in the in-text citation.
Page numbers are only required with direct quotes in APA . If you are quoting from a work that does not have page numbers (e.g., webpages or YouTube videos ), you can use an alternative locator, such as:
Note that Bible citations always use chapter and verse numbers, even when page numbers are available:
If a statement is supported by multiple sources, the in-text citations can be combined in one parenthesis. Order the sources alphabetically, and separate them with a semicolon.
When citing multiple works from the same author, list the years of publication separated by a comma.
When in-text citations are ambiguous because they correspond to multiple reference entries, apply the solutions outlined in the table below.
Situation | Solution | In-text citation |
---|---|---|
Multiple works by the same author in the same year. | Add a lowercase letter after the year. | (Cooper, 2018a) (Cooper, 2018b) |
Different authors with the same last name. | Include the authors’ initials. | (H. Taylor, 2019) (B. J. Taylor, 2016) |
Multiple works with 3+ authors that shorten to the same form (i.e., same first author(s) and date). | Include as many names as needed to distinguish the citations. | (Cooper, Lee, et al., 2015) (Cooper, Ross, et al., 2015) |
If you want to refer to a source that you have found in another source, you should always try to access the original or primary source .
However, if you cannot find the original source , you should cite it through the secondary source that led you to it, using the phrase “as cited in”.
If the publication date of the primary source is unknown, include only the year of publication of the secondary source.
Only include a reference entry for the secondary source, not the primary source.
Personal communications , such as phone calls, emails, and interviews, are not included in the reference list because readers can’t access them. The in-text citation is also formatted slightly differently.
Include the initials and last name of the person you communicated with, the words “personal communication,” and the exact date in parentheses.
General mentions of a website or software don’t have to be cited with an in-text citation or entry in the reference list. Instead, incorporate relevant information into the running text.
When citing a webpage or online article , the APA in-text citation consists of the author’s last name and year of publication. For example: (Worland & Williams, 2015). Note that the author can also be an organization. For example: (American Psychological Association, 2019).
If you’re quoting you should also include a locator. Since web pages don’t have page numbers, you can use one of the following options:
Instead of the author’s name, include the first few words of the work’s title in the in-text citation. Enclose the title in double quotation marks when citing an article, web page or book chapter. Italicize the title of periodicals, books, and reports.
If the publication date is unknown , use “n.d.” (no date) instead. For example: (Johnson, n.d.).
The abbreviation “ et al. ” (meaning “and others”) is used to shorten APA in-text citations with three or more authors . Here’s how it works:
Only include the first author’s last name, followed by “et al.”, a comma and the year of publication, for example (Taylor et al., 2018).
Always include page numbers in the APA in-text citation when quoting a source . Don’t include page numbers when referring to a work as a whole – for example, an entire book or journal article.
If your source does not have page numbers, you can use an alternative locator such as a timestamp, chapter heading or paragraph number.
If you cite several sources by the same author or group of authors, you’ll distinguish between them in your APA in-text citations using the year of publication.
If you cite multiple sources by the same author(s) at the same point , you can just write the author name(s) once and separate the different years with commas, e.g., (Smith, 2020, 2021).
To distinguish between sources with the same author(s) and the same publication year, add a different lowercase letter after the year for each source, e.g., (Smith, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). Add the same letters to the corresponding reference entries .
In an APA in-text citation , you use the phrase “ as cited in ” if you want to cite a source indirectly (i.e., if you cannot find the original source).
Parenthetical citation: (Brown, 1829, as cited in Mahone, 2018) Narrative citation: Brown (1829, as cited in Mahone, 2018) states that…
On the reference page , you only include the secondary source (Mahone, 2018).
An APA in-text citation is placed before the final punctuation mark in a sentence.
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
Streefkerk, R. (2024, September 05). APA In-Text Citations (7th Ed.) | Multiple Authors & Missing Info. Scribbr. Retrieved September 16, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-style/in-text-citation/
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Paraphrasing is one way to use a text in your own writing without directly quoting source material. Anytime you are taking information from a source that is not your own, you need to specify where you got that information.
Note that the examples in this section use MLA style for in-text citation.
Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers . 2nd ed., 1976, pp. 46-47.
In research papers, students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).
Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).
Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.
A note about plagiarism: This example has been classed as plagiarism, in part, because of its failure to deploy any citation. Plagiarism is a serious offense in the academic world. However, we acknowledge that plagiarism is a difficult term to define; that its definition may be contextually sensitive; and that not all instances of plagiarism are created equal—that is, there are varying “degrees of egregiousness” for different cases of plagiarism.
A direct quotation reproduces words verbatim from another work or from your own previously published work. It is best to paraphrase sources rather than directly quoting them because paraphrasing allows you to fit material to the context of your paper and writing style.
Use direct quotations rather than paraphrasing:
Instructors, programs, editors, and publishers may establish limits on the use of direct quotations. Consult your instructor or editor if you are concerned that you may have too much quoted material in your paper.
This page addresses how to format short quotations and block quotations. Additional information is available about how to:
Quotations are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Sections 8.25 to 8.35 and the Concise Guide Sections 8.25 to 8.34
For quotations of fewer than 40 words, add quotation marks around the words and incorporate the quote into your own text—there is no additional formatting needed. Do not insert an ellipsis at the beginning and/or end of a quotation unless the original source includes an ellipsis.
Effective teams can be difficult to describe because “high performance along one domain does not translate to high performance along another” (Ervin et al., 2018, p. 470).
For a direct quotation, always include a full citation ( parenthetical or narrative ) in the same sentence as the quotation, including the page number (or other location information, e.g., paragraph number).
Format quotations of 40 words or more as block quotations:
Researchers have studied how people talk to themselves:
Inner speech is a paradoxical phenomenon. It is an experience that is central to many people’s everyday lives, and yet it presents considerable challenges to any effort to study it scientifically. Nevertheless, a wide range of methodologies and approaches have combined to shed light on the subjective experience of inner speech and its cognitive and neural underpinnings. (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015, p. 957)
Flores et al. (2018) described how they addressed potential researcher bias when working with an intersectional community of transgender people of color:
Everyone on the research team belonged to a stigmatized group but also held privileged identities. Throughout the research process, we attended to the ways in which our privileged and oppressed identities may have influenced the research process, findings, and presentation of results. (p. 311)
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Secondary Sources. In scholarly work, a primary source reports original content; a secondary source refers to content first reported in another source. Cite secondary sources sparingly—for instance, when the original work is out of print, unavailable, or available only in a language that you do not understand.
Published authors paraphrase their sources most of the time, rather than directly quoting the sources; student authors should emulate this practice by paraphrasing more than directly quoting. ... use a secondary source citation. Learn more. Paraphrases are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Sections 8.23 ...
A guide to help users create citations using APA (American Psychological Association) style, 7th edition. Skip to Main Content. Toggle navigation. ... Secondary Sources; Search this Guide Search. APA Citation Style, 7th edition: Secondary Sources ... (Paraphrase): Fong's 2003 study (as cited in Bertram, 2009) found that older students ...
Citing Secondary Sources ("as cited in") (APA, 2020, p. 258) • Cite primary sources when possible and use secondary sources ("as cited in") sparingly. o For example, if you want to cite something from Allport's diary which is quoted or paraphrased in Nicholson (2003): § Allport wrote that … (as cited in Nicholson, 2003).
If you use a source that was cited in another source, name the original source in your signal phrase then write "as cited in" the secondary source in parentheses. List only the secondary source in your reference list. Example of in-text citation: According to a study by Smith (as cited in Hanrahan, et al., 2005)... Example of Reference list ...
Example of a Secondary Source Use. Quote & In-Text Citation. According to Culver (2006, as cited in Jones, 2009), learning APA "can be tough, but like any skill, it just takes practice" (p. 23). ... APA encourages including the page number when paraphrasing if it will help the reader locate the information in a long text and distinguish between ...
An indirect citation or secondary source is when the ideas of one author are published in another author's text but you have not read or accessed the original author's work. Include both the original author and year and the author and year of the work where quote/idea was found in the in-text reference.
Secondary sources are covered in Section 8.6 of the APA Publication Manual, 7th ed., ... Paraphrasing or summarizing the main findings or takeaways from a research article is the preferred method of citing sources in an APA paper. Always include the last name of the author(s) and the year of the article, so your reader can find the full ...
If you cannot access the original source, use these steps to give proper credit: In the reference list, provide the details of the work in which you found the quotation or idea (this work is considered the secondary source). For the in-text citation, include the author and year of both the original and secondary sources.
Rules for paraphrasing. The source reference for a paraphrase consists of author's surname and the publication year in parentheses. Citing the page number is not mandatory, but is recommended when referring to a specific passage. APA Guidelines 7th editon: Paraphrasing and Citing. Watch on.
Basic guidelines for formatting the reference list at the end of a standard APA research paper Author/Authors Rules for handling works by a single author or multiple authors that apply to all APA-style references in your reference list, regardless of the type of work (book, article, electronic resource, etc.)
It's okay to cite a secondary source when you've exhausted the options for finding the original work. For example, an out-of-print work may be impossible for you to find but could still be quoted in recent work by other authors. Or perhaps the paper you're reading has cited a personal correspondence. You obviously can't cite the ...
Sometimes an author of a book, article or website will mention another person's work by using a quotation or paraphrased idea from that source. (This may be called a secondary source.) For example, the Kirkey article you are reading includes a quotation by Smith that you would like to include in your essay.
If the year of publication of the primary source is known, also include it in the text citation. For example, if you read a work by Lyon et al. (2014) in which Rabbitt (1982) was cited, and you were unable to read Rabbitt's work yourself, cite Rabbitt's work as the original source, followed by Lyon et al.'s work as the secondary source.
When discussing a work found in a secondary source, first mention the work discussed and in parentheses mention the secondary work "as cited in." Example According to Lewis's study (as cited in Wilson, 2001), business students were more likely to use the APA format in writing papers.
A guide to help users create citations using APA (American Psychological Association) style, 7th edition. Skip to Main Content. ... Secondary Sources. ... (Paraphrase): Fong's 2003 study (as cited in Bertram, 2009) found that older students' memory can ...
Quoting Sources: When you quote a source, you include the author's exact words in your text. Use "quotation marks" around the author's words. Include signal phrases and an in-text citation to show where the quote is from. Paraphrasing Sources: When you paraphrase a source, you restate the source's ideas in your own words and sentence structure.
Use secondary sources sparingly, for instance, when the original work is out of print, unavailable through usual sources, or not available in English. Give the secondary source in the reference list; in text, name the original work and give a citation for the secondary source. For example, if Allport's work is cited in Nicholson and you did not ...
APA Style (7th Edition) These OWL resources will help you learn how to use the American Psychological Association (APA) citation and format style. This section contains resources on in-text citation and the References page, as well as APA sample papers, slide presentations, and the APA classroom poster.
In-text citations briefly identify the source of information in the body text. They correspond to a full reference entry at the end of your paper. APA in-text citations consist of the author's last name and publication year. When citing a specific part of a source, also include a page number or range, for example (Parker, 2020, p.
Citing Multiple Works. When citing multiple works parenthetically, place the citations in alphabetical order, separating them with semicolons. (Adams et al., 2019; Shumway & Shulman, 2015; Westinghouse, 2017) Arrange two or more works by the same authors by year of publication. Place citations with no date first.
6 Steps to Effective Paraphrasing. Reread the original passage until you understand its full meaning. Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card. Jot down a few words below your paraphrase to remind you later how you envision using this material. At the top of the note card, write a key word or phrase to indicate the ...
It is best to paraphrase sources rather than directly quoting them because paraphrasing allows you to fit material to the context of your paper and writing style. ... Quotations are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Sections 8.25 to 8.35 and the Concise Guide Sections 8.25 to 8.34.