As the name suggests appears in the text of your paper rather than at the bottom or at the end of chapter. They allow your reader to know exactly where your information comes from as they are reading your paper. Meaning that in-text citations should be placed at the same sentence as the information from other sources occurs in your paper. Remember they not only let's you give credit to those whose work you have used but also highlights the research work you have done.
All APA in-text citations have three parts:
Format
There are two ways to write create in-text citations, parenthetical and narrative.
Parenthetical appears at the end of a sentence with all the above information in parentheses. The author name and date are separated by a comma. The end of sentence punctuation always occurs after the close parenthesis.
Example: There are two ways to create in-text citations in APA (APA Publication Manual, 2019).
Narrative means the in-text citations is part of the sentence. In this the author name(s) appear in the text of the sentence and is followed but the date in parentheses right after it.
Example: The APA Publication Manual (2019) outlines two ways to create in-text citations.
Using both styles together helps improve the flow and readability of your paper.
There are many different variables for author names and each will effect In-text citations. Here are the rules and examples of the most common ones encountered.
This is the simplest just add the last name of your author.
Examples: Parenthetical: Harry and Ron meet for the first time (Rowling, 1998).
Narrative: According to Rowling (1998) Harry and Ron meet for the first time.
When citing a work with 2 authors both names are used. Keep the names in the order they appear in the original source. The main difference here depends on style used to cite. For parenthetical a ‘&’ is used between the author names and ‘and’ is used for the narrative style.
Examples: Parenthetical: Some feminists researchers question that “women's responses to the war have been ignored” (Raitt & Tate, 1997, p. 2).
Narrative: According to feminist researchers Raitt and Tate (1997), “It is no longer true to claim that women's responses to the war have been ignored” (p. 2).
When citing a work with three or more authors, use the first author’s name followed by et al.. Don’t forget period at the end of al, it is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase et alia which means and others.
Examples: Parenthetical: The Avengers greatly grieved Natasha’s death (Banner et al., 2019).
Narrative: According to Banner et al. (2019) the team never recovered from Natasha’s death.
There will be times when you don’t have an author, in this case the title is used in place of an author name. If the title is too long you can shorten it the first three words as long as it is clear which source is being referred to.
Also, the title will still use the same formatting rules as used in the reference. Meaning if it’s a book then it follows those rules.
Examples: Narrative: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2005) defines leadership as “a set of behaviours used to help people align their collective direction” (p.235).
Parenthetical: (Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary, 2005)
Helpful Hint: Remember if a title in narrative style citation, then it follows all the rules for a title of its type in the text e.g., title case, italics, etc.…
There are times when organizations will write reports, marketing and other materials without a named author(s). In these cases, it is understood that organization itself is writing the material or a corporate author. The organization’s name is used for the author in the both references and the in-text citations.
Examples: Parenthetical: Shipping times can affect customer satisfaction (Amazon, 2020).
Narrative: Amazon (2020) shipping times can affect customer satisfaction.
If the author is stated as Anonymous in the original, then and only then is it used in the reference and in-text citations. Otherwise, the title is used as an author.
The date is the date of publication and should match the date in the reference. However, in-text citations generally only use the year, even if the reference uses the full date.
If the author name(s) and year are the same as an other citation, then you will add a lower case letter to the end of the year to show they are different sources. The letters go in alphabetical order. Do this in the reference too.
Example: (Pratchett & Gaiman, 1990a) (Pratchett & Gaiman, 1990b)
If the work doesn’t give a date, don’t guess, use n.d. instead.
Example: (Shakespeare, n.d.)
Helpful Hint: Remember to include the periods after each lowercase letter or your instructor may say it’s wrong.