Citing Sources In Your Text

When to use citations

Whenever you use other people’s words or ideas in your writing, you should cite that source of information. Whether you are summarizing, paraphrasing or quoting a work directly, you must give credit to the originator of the idea that you are using. When you use another person’s words directly, they must be enclosed in quotation marks, with the source cited (see the section on [quotations]). Failure to cite appropriately is the same as claiming those ideas or words as your own and is considered plagiarism.

When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper. Reference citations in text are covered on pages 207-214 of the Publication Manual.

Formatting citations

Here are some basic rules for formatting citations in the body of your paper. For more information about these rules, see pages 94-99 and 207-209 of the Publication Manual. For information about formatting citations in your reference list, see our page on references.

• Always capitalize proper nouns, including author names.
• If you refer to the title of a source within your paper, capitalize all words that are four letters long or greater within the title of a source.
• When capitalizing titles, capitalize both words in a hypenated compound word.
• After a colon or dash in a title, capitalize the first word.
• Italicize the titles of longer works such as books, edited collections, movies, documentaries, or albums.
• Put quotation marks around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles, articles from edited collections, television shows, and song titles.
• If a work has two authors, cite both names every time the reference appears in your text. Join the authors' names with the word and.
• If a work has three, four, or five authors, cite all of the authors the first time you refer to the work in your text. The next time you refer to the work, shorten the citation to the last name of the first author plus the words et al. Join the authors' names with the word and if you are referring to them in the text; join the authors' names with an ampersand (&) if you are referring to them in a parenthetical citation.
• If a work has six authors (or more), cite only the last name of the first author plus the words et al.

How to use citations

Generally, it is best to put both the author and date in parentheses after you refer to information from that source (see example a). If you include this at the end of the sentence, be sure that the citation is before the period. If you directly refer to the author or date in the sentence, then you do not need to include that information in parentheses (see examples b and c). It is recommended to refer to the author’s name in the sentence itself only if that particular author is really important in what you are trying to say (e.g., you are describing their theory, your methodology is based on theirs). If you are just stating research findings, then you should try to put their name in parentheses so the reader’s attention is focused on the findings.

Examples for referring to another idea or study:

a. In a recent study of student performance (Jones, 1998), ...

b. Jones (1998) compared student performance ...

c. In 1998, Jones compared student performance ...

If you are referring to an idea from another work but NOT directly quoting the material, or making reference to an entire book, article or other work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication in your in-text reference.

If you are paraphrasing an idea from another work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication in your in-text reference, but APA guidelines encourage you to also provide the page number (although it is not required.)

If you are directly quoting from a work, you will need to include the author, year of publication, and the page number for the reference. See our sections on quotations for more information about this.

If there is no author to cite, such as when you are citing a web page that lists no author, use an abbreviated version of the title of the page in quotation marks to substitute for the name of the author.

A similar study was done of students learning to format research


papers ("Using APA," 2001). 

If you are citing a work that has no author and no date, use the first few words from the title, then the abbreviation n.d. (for "no date"). For more information about referring to electronic sources or sources without authors and/or dates in text, see Citations in Text of Electronic Material (http://www.apastyle.org/electext.html), Frequently Asked Questions about APA Style (http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html) from the APA web site, or our additional resources section.

In another study of students and research decisions, it was discovered


that students succeeded with tutoring ("Tutoring and APA," n.d.). 

Personal communications, such as e-mail messages to you, or private interviews that you conducted with another person, should be referred to in your in-text citations but NOT in Reference list examples. (For more information, see page 214 of the Publication Manual.) To cite a personal communication, provide initials and last name of the communicator, the words personal communication, plus an exact date in the body of your paper.

For example:

A. P. Smith also claimed that many of her students had difficulties



with APA style (personal communication, November 3, 2002). 

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