Reference Citations in Text

            The writer of an APA paper gives credit to the source of information at appropriate points in the text by citing the surname of the author and year of publication. The following are examples that use author’s name:

Rogers (1994) compared reaction times……..

In a recent study of reaction times (Rogers, 1994),……..

In 1994, Rogers compared………

Reaction times were compared in a recent study (Rogers, 1994).

            The last example is the most used format. A good rule of thumb is that at least one in text citation is necessary for each paragraph. However, more than one in text citation will be used if the information in the paragraph was extracted from more that one source.

            Sources that have no author are cited using the first few words of the reference list entry,  which is usually the title. Quotation marks are used around the titles of articles, and book titles are underlined. The following are examples of paraphrased (not quoted) citations having no author:     

Parents are leaving small children at home alone (“Child Abuse,” 1998).

Children do not feel safe in their own homes (Abuse in America, 1998).

If information from an interview is being used, the interviewee’s first initial, last name, the words personal communication, and date of the interview (month day, year) are inserted as a parenthetical citation.  An interview, however, will not appear on the reference page. The following is an example of information from an interview:

An expert agreed with this (R. Jones, personal communication, March 15, 1998). 

If two citations exist with the same author and year, then a lower case letter is used  immediately following the year. Here is an example: (Jones, 1998a) and (Jones, 1998b).