APA In-text Citations: Instructional Video
The rules governing in-text (and parenthetical) citations in APA style can be overwhelming. Students often express confusion about when to spell out acronyms, when to list all authors, when to use et al., and how to organize more than one citation within the same set of parentheses. In the video below, I help clear up the confusion regarding how to style APA in-text citations.
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The transcript for this video appears below.
In this video I’ll cover the most common usage of in-text or parenthetical citations and I’ll refer you to several websites and pages and sections in the APA 6th edition manual that have additional information for you that I don’t discuss here.
The most common types of in-text citations come in two styles. One in which the author or authors’ last names or the organisational author’s name is in the text of the sentence itself, and one in which the author information appears only in parentheses, marking it as a source of an assertion in your text.
In the first type of citation, in which the author or organization is actually mentioned in your sentence, the parenthetical citation only includes the year of the publication of that source and it comes immediately after the author or organization name in the sentence. In addition, however, any organization that is readily defined by an abbreviation, according to the definition on page 177 of the APA 6th edition, includes that abbreviation for the organization name before the publication year on first mention in the text, like this example: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is very easily recognized as CDC. So, we’re going to use that abbreviation in the parenthetical citation after the organization has been spelled out fully on first mention in the text. Now pay close attention to the rules for what happens upon first mention of an organizational name and what happens in subsequent mentions of that same reference. The table on page 177 in the APA 6th edition is invaluable for this kind of information. You can also find this information on the APA style blog or Purdue OWL websites.
Now with the second type of parenthetical citation, you need to include two things in parentheses: the author or the organizational name or abbreviation and the year of publication. These parenthetical citations come at the very end of your sentence, unless specific parts of the sentence are attributed to totally different sources, as in the second example here.
What happens if you have an end-of-sentence citation to an assertion that has multiple sources, not just one source? That’s easy. Put the citations in alphabetical order and separate them by semicolons within the same set of parenthesis, like this example.
The only time you organize parenthetical citations by publication date is when you are citing more than one work by the same author in the same set of parenthesis, and you can see APA page 178 for that.
The only time you need to put author’s first initials in your sentence text or in parenthetical citations is a fairly rare instance: When you have two references in the same year by two different authors with the same last name. See APA page 176 for more about that.
The APA manual does an excellent job of illustrating how to style your citations if you have one, two, three, four, five or six or more authors in the chart on page 177 and in the text covering sections 6.11 through 6.16.
Two additional important notes are the use of “and” and the placement of end-of-sentence periods. Notice that if you have more than one author on a paper and you write those authors within the text of the sentence, you either use “and” or “et al.” in the text, depending on the number of authors and which mention in the text the citation is. But within the full parenthetical citations you always use the “&” or the “and” symbol, not the word “and”. See the examples in the table on page 177 in the APA manual 6th edition.
Note the placement of the period as well: when you have parenthetical citations at the end of the sentence, the period always goes AFTER the citation, not before.
There are several other special circumstances that need to be addressed, such as citing personal communications and citing specific parts of a source, which you can find on page 178 through 179 of the manual, as well as these other online sources. One rule that writers often miss is what to do with back-to-back parenthesis. Combine them into one set of parentheses by using a semicolon, like this.
And remember that every publication you cite should actually appear in your references list. For more about how to style that page in your paper, see my video on the topic.
In this video I’ll cover the most common usage of in-text or parenthetical citations and I’ll refer you to several websites and pages and sections in the APA 6th edition manual that have additional information for you that I don’t discuss here.
The most common types of in-text citations come in two styles. One in which the author or authors’ last names or the organisational author’s name is in the text of the sentence itself, and one in which the author information appears only in parentheses, marking it as a source of an assertion in your text.
In the first type of citation, in which the author or organization is actually mentioned in your sentence, the parenthetical citation only includes the year of the publication of that source and it comes immediately after the author or organization name in the sentence. In addition, however, any organization that is readily defined by an abbreviation, according to the definition on page 177 of the APA 6th edition, includes that abbreviation for the organization name before the publication year on first mention in the text, like this example: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is very easily recognized as CDC. So, we’re going to use that abbreviation in the parenthetical citation after the organization has been spelled out fully on first mention in the text. Now pay close attention to the rules for what happens upon first mention of an organizational name and what happens in subsequent mentions of that same reference. The table on page 177 in the APA 6th edition is invaluable for this kind of information. You can also find this information on the APA style blog or Purdue OWL websites.
Now with the second type of parenthetical citation, you need to include two things in parentheses: the author or the organizational name or abbreviation and the year of publication. These parenthetical citations come at the very end of your sentence, unless specific parts of the sentence are attributed to totally different sources, as in the second example here.
What happens if you have an end-of-sentence citation to an assertion that has multiple sources, not just one source? That’s easy. Put the citations in alphabetical order and separate them by semicolons within the same set of parenthesis, like this example.
The only time you organize parenthetical citations by publication date is when you are citing more than one work by the same author in the same set of parenthesis, and you can see APA page 178 for that.
The only time you need to put author’s first initials in your sentence text or in parenthetical citations is a fairly rare instance: When you have two references in the same year by two different authors with the same last name. See APA page 176 for more about that.
The APA manual does an excellent job of illustrating how to style your citations if you have one, two, three, four, five or six or more authors in the chart on page 177 and in the text covering sections 6.11 through 6.16.
Two additional important notes are the use of “and” and the placement of end-of-sentence periods. Notice that if you have more than one author on a paper and you write those authors within the text of the sentence, you either use “and” or “et al.” in the text, depending on the number of authors and which mention in the text the citation is. But within the full parenthetical citations you always use the “&” or the “and” symbol, not the word “and”. See the examples in the table on page 177 in the APA manual 6th edition.
Note the placement of the period as well: when you have parenthetical citations at the end of the sentence, the period always goes AFTER the citation, not before.
There are several other special circumstances that need to be addressed, such as citing personal communications and citing specific parts of a source, which you can find on page 178 through 179 of the manual, as well as these other online sources. One rule that writers often miss is what to do with back-to-back parenthesis. Combine them into one set of parentheses by using a semicolon, like this.
And remember that every publication you cite should actually appear in your references list. For more about how to style that page in your paper, see my video on the topic.