How To Cite

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How to Create an In-Text Citation in APA Style

The in-text citation includes the author(s) and the year the information was produced. If we use a direct quotation, we also include the page number(s) if page numbers are available. There are different ways to create an in-text citation so it will be useful for us to refer to guides such as these from the Online Writing Lab (OWL):

One critical step to follow is to make sure that our in-text citations match the author name(s), or title when no author is listed, of the corresponding bibliographic citation that will go in the Reference list. Therefore, it's easiest to create the bibliographic citation first, so we know what name or title we should use in the in-text citation.

Sample bibliographic citation for the References list:

Howard, J. (2009). Anger over style guide's errors prompts publisher to offer replacements. Chronicle of Higher Education, 56(11), A10.

Once we have the bibliographic citation, we can create our in-text citation. We can either incorporate the author's last name into the sentence itself, or place the author's name in the parentheses with the date, and page number for a direct quote. You can see examples of each of these options below. Note that these examples have the in-text citations bolded to show us what they look like as part of a sentence, but in our own papers, we would not bold our in-text citations.

In-text citation example for a quotation:

According to Howard (2009), "There was disquiet about the number of errors in the book" (p. A10).
She stated, "There was disquiet about the number of errors in the book," but she did not offer an explanation as to why they occurred (Howard, 2009, p. A10).

In-text citation example for a paraphrase or summary:

Howard (2009) compared the updated style guide ...
In a recent study of style guide updates (Howard, 2009), ...

Did you notice? If the in-text citation comes at the end of the sentence, then the final punctuation mark (usually a period) is placed outside the parentheses. Look again the two examples above under In-text citation example for a quotation.

Sample in-text citations from:

"Citing Your Sources: The Basics Canvas Module" by Seattle Central College Library (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Links to an external site.)

Now click the Integrating APA In-Text Citations into Our Writing tab.

Integrating APA In-Text Citations into Our Writing

When we cite sources, we want to make them fit into our writing as smoothly as possible. When integrating sources into our papers, it's important to use signal phrases that help us:

Establish the authority of the people we're citing
Introduce summaries and paraphrases
Put direct quotes in context
Integrate statistics and other facts.

Below are some examples of signal phrases and in-text citations that we might use. Note that these examples have the in-text citations bolded to show us what they look like as part of a sentence but in our own papers, we would not bold our in-text citations.

When introducing an author and including a direct quote:

In his book An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore (2006) warns, "global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc; it is us" (p. 10).

When including a direct quote (without introduction of the author):

Scientific research on the impact of global warming abounds and climate variability has recently received much-needed attention, providing opportunities to "probe causes of the climate variability simulated by coupled climate models that can reproduce reliable long-term climate variations" (Liu et al., 2012, p. 1064).

When summarizing or paraphrasing the work of the author:

There are four types of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2013).

Example

Below is an example of what the corresponding bibliographic citations would look like in the References page at the end of the paper or project:

References

Gore, A. (2006). An Inconvenient Truth: The planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press.

Liu, J., Wang, B., Yim, S.Y., Lee, J.Y., Jhun, J.G., & Ha, K.J. (2012). What drives the global summer monsoon over the past millennium? Climate Dynamics, 39(5), 1063–1072. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1360-x Links to an external site.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2013, September 9). Overview of Greenhouse Gases. Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Overviews & Factsheets. Retrieved November 27, 2013, from http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases.html Links to an external site.

More Than One Author?

Refer to the OWL APA section on In-Text Citations: Author/Authors Links to an external site. for how to create in-text citations when a source has multiple authors.

Now click the How to Create a Reference Page in APA Style tab.

How to Create a Reference Page in APA Style

As noted before, the References page goes at the end of our research paper, project, or presentation, and it includes a detailed list of sources we used in our paper. Each item in the References list is called a bibliographic citation. We may include books, electronic books, articles, web sites, charts, images, etc. in our References page.

This page provides links to sources that will help us create a References page in APA style, but we will likely need to look up specific examples as we create our own References page. There are several specific resources that can help with this:

Library Guide on APA Format
Printable APA Format Handout Links to an external site.
Reference List: Basic Rules Links to an external site. from the OWL web site (also see the other reference list information in the left menu of this page)

Important things to remember about References pages:

Bibliographic citations in APA style always start with an author's (or creator's) last name, unless there is no author and then they start with the title of the work we're citing. (See sample papers below).
Each bibliographic citation is indented (called a hanging indent).
- See instructions for adding a hanging indent in Google docs Links to an external site..
- See instructions for adding a hanging indent and double spacing in MS Word Links to an external site..
Reference pages are alphabetized from A-Z. (See sample papers below).
Reference pages are double-spaced.
It's useful to look at samples of APA papers to see what the formatting looks like.
- Sample paper on OWL web site Links to an external site. - see APA 7 Student Paper sample
- Sample paper on APA web site Links to an external site. - see Annotated Student Sample Paper (pdf) and Student Sample Paper (docx)

Now click the Video Review of Citations and Reference Page tab.