Skip to Main Content

APA Citation Help

Use this guide to assist with your APA citations.

In-Text Citations

In-Text Citations

In-text citations are the references to the research you consulted that support your point.  These citations occur within the text of your paper or assignment. 

In-text citations typically look like this:

TWO POSSIBLE FORMATS:

(Author, date)

Author (date) states that.....

EXAMPLES:

Research has suggested that ecological systems are more accurately represented as overlapping networks, rather than nested systems  (Watling, 2013).

Notice the in-text citation is placed INSIDE the final punctuation mark (i.e. period).

According to Watling (2013), Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems (micro, meso, exo, etc.) can be redefined based on the social interactions of the child.

An in-text citation indicates two things:

  1. The information stated here is not my own.  I am summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting this information. If using a direct quote, make sure to include quotation marks around the exact words pulled from the source.
  2. It points the reader to look at the Reference List at the end of the paper to see the full citation.  From there the reader could track down the original source if they would like more information.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more information including how to format in-text citations with various author types (unknown author or organization as author) or different numbers of authors (2 authors, 3-5 authors, or more), please see the following Purdue OWL sites: