Undergraduate Research and Source Evaluation

APA In-text Citations

In APA style, you will use in-text citations to refer readers to a reference list. Create an in-text citation whenever you quote another work, or whenever you paraphrase another work in your own words. Make sure to include citation information either in the narrative of your paper, or as a parenthetical citation. See the examples below.

APA In-text Citation Examples

Direct Quotations

All APA style in-text citations should include the surname(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication. When quoting a specific part of the source, you must also provide information about the specific part of the source you are quoting (e.g. page numbers).

APA in-text citations can be in one of two formats:

(1) Parenthetical citations include the required information in parentheses, for example:

"We conclude that we should not assume that our students come into our classrooms prepared to write an APA style paper and providing them with adequate instructions is simple and critical." (Obeid & Hill, 2018 p. 313).

(2) Narrative citations incorporate citation information into the text as part of the sentence. For example:

"Obeid & Hill (2018) concluded that "we should not assume that our students come into our classrooms prepared to write an APA style paper and providing them with adequate instructions is simple and critical" (p. 313).

Place long direct quotations (40 words or more) in a left-indented block. Quotation marks are no longer needed for longer quotations. For example:

The researchers came to the following conclusions:

We conclude that we should not assume that our students come into our classrooms prepared to write an APA style paper and providing them with adequate instructions is simple and critical. Additionally, it is also important to provide students with a clear detailed rubric that can help guide them as they are preparing their papers, a rubric that will also make the instructor's grading not only faster, but more objective. (Obeid & Hill, 2018 p. 313).

Paraphrasing

It is optional to include the page number for paraphrasing (however you may want to do so to help your reader find the original text themselves). For example:

Providing sufficient instruction in APA style is a straightforward yet vital way to support students that may not be prepared to write a paper in APA style(Obeid & Hill, 2018 p. 313).

Archival Documents

Use (Author’s last name(s) or Organization and the year the document was written or created. The APA Style website provides more details.

APA Use of "et al."

The Latin phrase "et al." ("and others") is used to avoid lengthy in-text citations.

Below are the rules for using "et al." in APA citations:

Number of authors	Parenthetical citation	Narrative citation
One	(Chan, 2018)	Chan (2018)
Two	(Yeung & Wong, 2019)	Yeung and Wong (2019)
Three or more	(Mendelsohn et al., 2010)	Mendelsohn et al. (2010)

Note that you should never use "et al." in your list of references.