Referencing: In-Text Citations

Your in-text citation must match your end-text reference but not be too obstructive. This is done by only including the family name of the authors and reducing the number of authors we include. 

Number of authors

	Parenthetical citation	Narrative citation
1 author	(Smith, 2007)	Smith (2007)
2 authors	(Mihrshahi & Baur, 2018)	Mihrshahi and Baur (2018)
3 or more authors	(Hewit et al., 2016)	Hewit et al. (2016)
Group author	(Department of Health, 2020)	Department of Health (2020)

• If the work you are citing has one or two authors, include them in your citation every time. Separate two authors with an ampersand (&) in parenthetical citations, but write out the word 'and' if discussing the work in-text.
• If the work has 3 or more authors, your in-text citation will give only the family name of the first author, followed by "et al." (which means "and others").

 

Abbreviations

If an organisation's name is long and you will use it multiple times (more than 3 times), you can use an abbreviation in your citations.

The general tips for abbreviation are: 

• If the term will be used three times or fewer, do not abbreviate. However, you may use a recognisable abbreviation if it appears fewer than three times and helps avoid cumbersome language.

• Do not define abbreviations in headings. Use abbreviations in headings only if they have been previously defined.

• Use the abbreviation consistently. Do not alternate between the abbreviation and the full term.

• Make abbreviations plural by adding "s" (e.g., hours = hrs); do not use an apostrophe.

• Do not use periods with abbreviations (e.g., NASA, not N.A.S.A).

 Examples (bold text for emphasis):

Guidelines published by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Sciences (CCSDS) in 2016 . . . as previously discussed (CCSDS, 2012).

. . . found in several studies (National Mental Health Commission [NMHC], 2018, 2019a, 2019b). A future NMHC report is planned on . . .

 

No Author

If there is no author, your end-text reference will use the title in its place (see section on End-Text References). Your in-text citation should include a few words of that title, in title case.

If the title is italicised (stand-alone works e.g. books and films), italicise the few words of your title in your in-text citation. If it is not italicised (works that are part of a whole e.g. chapters and articles), enclose those few words within double quotation marks.

 

Full end-text reference for an news article (i.e. a part of a larger work) with no author

Italian government declares state of emergency in flood-ravaged Venice. (2019, November 15). The Age. https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/italian-government-set-to-declare-state-of-emergency-in-venice-20191115-p53ast.html

In-text citation

("Italian Government Declares," 2019)

In the article "Italian Government Declares" (2019) . . .

 

Full reference example for a stand-alone work with no author

Interpersonal skills. (2019). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxx

In-text citation

(Interpersonal Skills, 2019)

According to Interpersonal Skills (2019) . . .

Same first authors and year

If you have a source that has the same first authors or the first authors share the same family name you need to identify them. 

 

Authors with the same surname in different works

(A. L. Smith & Gorkin, 2019; H. Smith, 1982)

Authors with the same surname in the same work

(Palmer & Palmer, 2016)

 

Multiple authors, same first author; same year

(Kong, Webb, McLaughan, et al., 2019; Kong, Webb, Sheridan, et al., 2019)

Only the final author is different

. . . with unexpected results (Kong, Webb, & McLaughan, 2019). These findings were corroborated by Kong, Webb, and Sheridan (2019) . . .

The date in the in-text citation only includes the year of publication. 

 (Smith, 2007).

If there is no date use n.d.

(Jones, n.d.)

To cite a specific part of a text within your in-text citation, include information that would identify that portion of the work alongside the usual author-date citation. This might be a page range, a foreword or chapter from an authored book, the appendix of a report—whatever specific portion you would like to highlight.

If a work has no page numbers, help the reader find the relevant section of cited work using a different method.

Examples:

• paragraph number
• section name
• time stamp

What you use depends on what is available in the work you are citing.

Your reference list should contain an entry for the entire work, not just the portion you are citing.

You can also use this method to discuss a section of work within your writing.

For more information about quotations visit the APA webpage: Direct Quotation of Material Without Page Numbers.

Page number

p. 25

Page range

If you need to quote something across multiple pages use a page range: 

(Wang, 2018, pp. 27-31)

 

Section name

If referring to a section in a standard or framework you can use the section numbers. When referring to a section use the term the section is called (e.g. Chapter, Standard, Principle, Action). 

(Beyond Blue, n.d., Plan for the Future section)

If the section title is long, you can abbreviate it to the first few words. Enclose the shortened section title in quotation marks.

(World Health Organization, 2020, "How to Cope" section)

To cite a specific kind of section (e.g. chapter or figure), write the type of section out in full, beginning with a capital letter. See the APA webpage Citing Specific Parts of a Source for more examples.

(Thornton, 2019, Slide 14)

(Sheridan, 2006, Chapter 2)

(NMBA, 2016, Standard 5)

Time stamp

To quote from an audiovisual work, include a time stamp for the point where the quotation begins.

(Boisvert, 2019, 3:38)

Plays and other page numbering systems

Some classic works (like Shakespeare's works or the Bible) use a numbering system that is consistent across editions.

When citing specific portions it can be more helpful to use that system than to give page numbers, e.g. citing lines in Act 5, Scene 1:

(Shakespeare, 1623/1963, 5.1.38-43)

See the APA Style website for more information about works with canonically numbered sections.

The general form is (Author, Year), within parentheses/brackets. Parenthetical citation is also known as information-prominent citation: it is used to emphasise the information being cited.

A parenthetical citation should directly follow the idea being cited. Include it within the punctuation of the sentence or portion of a sentence the citation relates to. For instance:

. . . as has been shown in a recent study (Mihrshahi & Baur, 2018), and discussed at length in the literature in years past (Smith, 2007).

Narrative citation is also known as author-prominent citation. Narrative citations place more emphasis on the author of the work you are using. This type of citation can introduce some variety into your writing, and will sound more natural in an oral presentation than a citation at the end of the sentence. 

Kessler (2014) found that among epidemiological samples . . .

In 2014, Kessler's study of epidemiological samples showed that . . .

If multiple works you have read contribute to the idea you are presenting (or support your work as evidence), you can include them in single parenthetical citation.

Place the works in the order they appear in the reference list, which is usually alphabetically by first author.

Note: Too many citations can be visually disruptive for a reader. Include only the citations you need to support your work. What counts as an appropriate level of citation depends on the context, but see this APA Style post for more information.

 

Multiple references

(Cairns, 2013; Gemmill et al., 2001)

Same author, multiple dates

If including two works with the same author (or first author) but different dates, give the author only once, and list the dates in chronological author.

(Smith, 2015, 2019)

(Kong et al., n.d., 2018, 2019, 2020, in press)

If you would like to highlight one particularly important work out of several, give that citation first, followed by an introductory phrase (such as "see also"), and then the rest of the citations. You might do this to point out the most relevant, recent, or highly regarded source.

Special emphasis on one work

(Gemmill et al., 2001; more recently discussed in Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016; Kong et al., 2019, 2020; Sheridan & Khoo, 2018)

If the source you would like to cite is one that a reader would not be able to access (such as an email, phone conversation, or unrecorded lecture), you would need to cite it as personal communications.

You should only cite personal communications if there is no source you can cite for that information that would be available to other people.

Consider carefully whether the source you would like to cite is credible and appropriate to include in your assignment. If you learned about an idea in a class lecture, you should look for the original research your lecturer used to create the class materials, and cite that. Only use this format if it is genuinely new information that is not available elsewhere.

 

Personal communication citation

For your in-text citation, include the first initials and family name of the source, the phrase 'personal communication', and the full date (if available).

(S. L. Henderson, personal communication, November 8, 2009)

Unlike other works you cite, you do not include a reference list entry for personal communications. End-text references provide the information needed for a reader to retrieve the source; these works are not retrievable.

 

If you have conducted personal interviews as part of a research project, your own research data does not count as personal communications. For more information about how to present information from your own data, see Section 8.36 in the APA manual.

Citing content you found in one source that is originally from another source (e.g. a quote from a book that was cited in a journal article) is called secondary citation. Secondary citations should be used sparingly. Before you use a secondary citation:

• Can you find and access the original source? If so read and cite that.
• Does the work you've read provides context, a new approach, or synthesis of the cited ideas? If so cite the source that you have.
• Is the work simply reporting the work of another researcher? Then you'll need a secondary citation.

In-text you will need to include both the author and date of the work you used and the original.

Example: To cite material from an out of print poetry book by S. Khoo (originally published in 1928), which was quoted in a 2020 video by L. Sheridan, the in-text citation is:

(Khoo, 1928, as cited in Sheridan, 2020)

The end-text reference will be for the L. Sheridan video only: This is the work that was accessed.

Only include the end-text reference for the works you have consulted.

For more information, read the APA Style page on secondary citations, or try this interactive tutorial and self-quiz on secondary sources.