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APA 7th Edition - University of Lincoln

In-text citations

All sources of information and data need to be cited in the text of your paper. These are called in-text citations and provide brief information about the source to enable readers to find complete information about the source in the alphabetical list of references that appears at the end of the document. Each work cited in the text must appear in the reference list and each work in the reference list must be cited in the text

The APA style uses the author-date style in the text. Put the surname of the author followed by the year of publication at the appropriate point in brackets in the text, including page numbers for direct quotations. This is called a parenthetical citation as the author name and publication date appear in brackets - e.g. 

Researchers need to skilfully disseminate their findings to enable continued progress for the replacement of questionable therapies (MacKillop et al., 2013). 

If you use the author's name in the sentence, then you need only cite the year of publication in brackets (unless it is a direct quotation which also require page numbers) - e.g.  

Kessler (2016) found that among epidemiological samples, early onset results in a more persistent and severe course.  

This is called narrative citation and it is good academic practice to use both forms of in-text citation in your work 

An in-text citation does not give full publication details, such as the title or publisher, this information should be in your reference list. 

Use an ampersand (&) between authors in parenthetical citations, e.g. (Hatwal & Bernard, 2018). Use the word “and” between authors in narrative citations, e.g. Hatwal and Bernard (2018). 

Citing multiple authors table

When a work has two authors, cite both names every time the reference occurs. When a work has three or more authors, cite the first author followed by the term et al. (Latin for ‘and others’) from the first citation. For example (Banner et al., 2017) or Banner et al. (2017). This is new to APA 7th. 

Note: Use last names only unless there are different authors with the same last name; in this case, use the initials of the different authors in addition to the last name.  

 Author type 

 Parenthetical citation 

 Narrative citation 

 One author 

 (Joyce, 2020) 

 Joyce (2020) 

 Two authors 

 (Flowers & Churchill, 2016)  

 Flowers and Churchill (2016) 

 Three or more  authors 

 (Rivers et al., 2018) 

 Rivers et al. (2018) 

 Group author with
 abbreviation  

 First citation 

 

 Subsequent citation 

 

 
 (American Psychological  Association [APA], 2017) 

 

 (APA, 2017) 

 

 
American Psychological  Association (APA, 2017) 

 

APA (2017) 

 Group author without abbreviation 

 (University of Lincoln, 2015) 

 University of Lincoln (2015) 

Presenting work by different authors

There are three ways to refer to the works of other authors: 

• Paraphrasing 

• Summarising  

• Direct quotations  

Paraphrasing  

Paraphrasing involves putting a short section of text into your own words. Although the words are you own, you are still using the ideas from the original text so you must acknowledge the source with an in-text citation. You do not need to include page numbers when paraphrasing - e.g. 

Ogilvie et al. (2014) argue that security of attachment in offending populations decreases according to the severity and degree of psychopathology. 

Summarising 

Summarising gives a broad overview of an information source. It describes the main ideas in your own words. It is necessary to attribute summarised ideas to the original source with an in-text citation. You do not need to provide page numbers when summarising.  

Direct quotations

Direct quotations should be used sparingly in academic writing. It is better to paraphrase or summarise what you have read.

If you do use a direct quotation, it must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author. For quotations of fewer than 40 words, use double quotation marks around the quotation. You must also include page numbers for the in-text citation for direct quotations. 

For parenthetical citations, the in-text citation is placed immediately after the quotation - e.g.

"Piaget proposed that infants are born in a state of solipsism, meaning that they fail to distinguish between self and surroundings" (Mitchell & Ziegler, 2013, p. 52).

For narrative citations, include the author in the sentence with the date in brackets after the author. Put the page number in brackets immediately after the quotation - e.g.

Mitchell and Ziegler (2013) noted how "Piaget proposed that infants are born in a state of solipsism" (p. 52).

If a quotation is 40 words or more, do not use quotation marks. Instead, start the quotation on a new line and use a block format in which the quotation is indented 0.5 in from the left margin and double space the entire quotation. E.g.

Intimately linked with egocentrism is a profound inability to understand and apply principles to help understand the

world. The young child's grasp of things is intuitive and highly subjective, rather than logical and objective. Consequently,

the child's thinking is dominated by surface appearance and not by underlying principles. (Mitchell & Ziegler, 2013, p. 37).

Citing works in text using 7th ed. APA style: Webinar recording

This recording of a webinar by experts at APA Style discusses how to format in-text citations, appropriate level of citations and integrating source material into a paper.