APA Citation Style (7th ed.): In-Text Citations

APA Citation Style: In-Text Citations

APA Style uses an Author-Date citation system. In-text citations are covered in Chapter 8 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed). The links below provide some additional information on in-text citation, taken from the official APA Style website.

General information:

In-text citations consist of the author's last name and publication year. Page numbers are required when quoting and encouraged when paraphrasing.

In-text citations are brief notations within the body of your paper which direct the reader to the corresponding complete citation information at the end of the paper in the References section.

In-text citations have two formats: parenthetical and narrative:

parenthetical: the author name and publication date appear in parentheses.
- e.g. It was recently discovered that laughter is the best medicine (Hall & Oates, 2020).
narrative: the author name is incorporated in the text of your paper as a part of the sentence and the year follows in parentheses.
- e.g. Hall and Oates (2020) recently discovered that laughter is the best medicine.

Basic Principles of Citation
Basic guidelines to follow when writing in-text citations.
Paraphrasing
A paraphrase restates another’s idea (or your own previously published idea) in your own words.
Quotations
A direct quotation reproduces words verbatim from another work or from your own previously published work.
Appropriate Level of Citation
Section 8.1 of the Publication Manual gives an overview of the level of citation required in an APA paper.
Secondary (or Indirect) Sources
Section 8.6 of the Publication Manual provides directions for citing sources that appear in another source (e.g. a book that has been cited in an article). As a general rule, APA recommends that secondary sources be avoided unless the original source is unavailable.
Parenthetical vs Narrative
Section 8.11 of the Publication Manual explains the differences between parenthetical and narrative citations.
Citing Multiple Works
Section 8.12 of the Publication Manual explains how to cite multiple works at the same time both parenthetically and in the narrative.
Citing Specific Parts of a Source
Section 8.13 of the Publication Manual indicates that when citing a specific part of a work (such as a table or figure), provide an author-date citation for the work plus information about the specific part. Then put an entry to the entire work in the reference list.
Number of Authors to Include in In-Text Citations
For a work with one or two authors, include all names in the in-text citation. For a work with three or more authors, include only the name of the first author with "et al." in the citation, unless this would create ambiguity. Section 8.17 of the Publication Manual explains in more detail.
How to cite ChatGPT
An APA Style Blog post on how to cite ChatGPT and other AI tools.