TLN Advanced Essay Writing Workshop

TLN Advanced Essay Writing Workshop In-text citations in APA style

APA style requires that you cite in the body of your essay the source of a fact, idea, quote, or datum you have borrowed. The way you do this is the parenthetical citation – which is a fancy way of saying a citation in parentheses ( ). The elements of the parenthetical citation are easy: ( author , year of publication , page ) Here’s a sample:

It has been argued that milk chocolate tastes better (Smith, 2001, p. 163).

Each parenthetical citation must correspond to a full citation in your reference list at the end of your essay. In this case, if we looked in the reference list we might see something like this:

Smith, J.T. (2001). A comparison of milk and dark chocolate. Journal of Chocolatology, 4, 134-167.

Easy? Okay, now here are some of the complications …

If you are referring to the whole document or (Smith, 2001) article, a page number is not necessary.

For two authors, use an ampersand. (Smith & Jones, 2004)

If there are 3-5 authors … . the first time cite them all (Smith, Jones, & Wilson, 1996, p. 345) . after that, use “et al.” (Smith et al., 1996, p. 345)

The author can be a group or institution. (Simon Fraser University Library, 2004, p. 2)

If there is no author, you sometimes use the title Newspaper article: (“Study finds”, 2003) of the item/article/webpage as author. If it is Book or report: (Annual Report, 2001) very long, use the first few words.

More than one item by the same author in the (Smith, 2001a, p. 45) same year? Distinguish them with a, b, c.

For long web documents with no page numbers, (Jones, 2002, Introduction section, para. 2) give the section and then paragraph.

Two citations in one set of parentheses: . different authors (Jones, 2002, p. 45; Smith, 1999, p. 67) . same author (Jones, 1999, 2002)

Stylistically, it is common practice to use the author’s name in the text of the essay, in which case you can omit it from the parenthetical citation. Either of the following two versions is fine:

It has been argued (Smith & Jones, 2004, p. Smith and Jones (2004, p. 678) argued that … 678) that …

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