Skip to Main Content

Student Orientation

In-Text Help

Basic Citation Styles

In this guide, we will show examples of how to cite in APA format. Please check with your professor to confirm the citation style required for your papers.

In-text citations

You must include an in-text citation when you refer to, summarize, paraphrase, or quote from another source. An in-text citation specifies the author and date of publication for the source and is placed in parenthesis after the reference in your paper. For every in-text citation in your paper, there must be a corresponding entry in your reference list.

APA in-text citation style uses the author's last name and the year of publication. If you are referring to an idea from another work but not directly quoting the material, or making reference to an entire book, article or other work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication and not the page number in your in-text reference, for example: (Smith, 2019).

For direct quotations, include the page number as well, for example: (Smith, 2019, p. 47). For sources such as websites and e-books that have no page numbers, use a paragraph number.

All sources that are cited in the text must appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.

Here is a chart explaining how to format the most common in-text citations in APA format:

Basic Citation Styles