APA uses an Author and Date citation style to connect the sources you mention to their details in your reference list, and make it clear to your reader or marker where you found your information.
You should include a citation for every piece of information you take from a published source.
In-text citations have two formats: parenthetical and narrative.
In parenthetical citations, both the author name and date (or equivalent information) appear in brackets. A parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence. When it appears at the end of a sentence, the full stop should be placed after the closing bracket.
For example:
This vulnerability is described... (Balay, 2018).
In narrative citations, this information is incorporated into the text as part of the sentence. Either the author name appears in the sentence, with the date (and page numbers if appropriate) in brackets immediately following it, or both author name and date appear in the sentence.
Balay (2018, p. 45) describes this vulnerability...
In their 2018 study, Balay described this vulnerability...
Either style is acceptable, but you must include all necessary information for a complete citation.
Page numbers and in-text citations
If you are using a direct quote from a source, you should always include a page number where available. Pagination should be copied exactly as it is presented on the document, so if a section of a book uses roman numerals for example, use those in your citation.
The APA manual states that although you are not required to provide a page or paragraph number in the citation for paraphrased information, you may include one in addition to the author and year when it would help interested readers locate the relevant passage within a long or complex work (e.g. a book).
We have included examples of in-text citations with and without page numbers in our guidance to show how these would be done.
Some lecturers have specific preferences about the use of page numbers in citations, so if you are in any doubt, please check with the lecturer who will be marking your work.
Citing from a source without page numbers
To quote from a publication with no page numbers (which could include dynamic ebooks in epub format, where the font size is not fixed and so pagination is not standard), you will need to provide your reader with another way of locating the relevant part of the source.
If the source is a webpage, or a short printed pamphlet, you can use paragraph numbers in place of pages. You may need to count the paragraphs manually if they are not numbered in the source. You should use para. in place of p. to show this is what you are doing:
(Smith, 2019, para. 7)
Smith (2019, para. 7) argues that...
Alternatively, if there are distinct sections in the source, you can use these to point your reader to the information you are using:
(Gecht-Silver & Duncombe, 2015, Osteoarthritis section)
If the work is particularly long, you can combine these two approaches to make it easier for your reader to locate the information:
(DeAnglis, 2018, Musical Forays section, para. 4)
Reference
If there is no named author (either individual or corporate), you should move the title of your source to the start of your reference (where the author would usually be).
Please see the guidance for the source type you are using for examples of how this would look.
However, if the author is designated as "Anonymous", cite the word Anonymous in your text as the author. It should also be used as the author in your reference list.
(Anonymous, 1993, p. 116).
Do not use "Anonymous" as an author unless it is designated in the work: works without authors are generally identified by their titles.
In-text Citation
When a source has no author, your citation should be the first two or three words of the title followed by the year.
If the title is italicised in the reference it should also be italicised in the citation. For example:
... in a recent book (Encyclopedia of psychology, 1991) ...
If the title is not italicised in the reference, it should be placed in double quotation marks in the citation. For example:
... in this article ("Individual differences", 1993) ...
For sources with two authors
Use both authors surnames in each in-text citation. If the citation is inside brackets, use an ampersand (&) between the names. If they are in the text of your work, use 'and' between them.
(Salas & D'Agostino, 2020)
Salas and D'Agostino (2020) argue that...
For sources with three or more authors
State the name of the first author, followed by 'et al.'
'et al.' is plural, meaning "and others".
(Jones et al., 2018)
Jones et al. (2018) found that...
The same applies if any of the authors are organisations or groups.
For information on references for sources with multiple authors, please see the guidance here.
It is common to find sources where organisations are listed as the authors. These can be companies, groups or institutions.
Where you have a document produced by an organisation and the organisation is commonly referred to by an abbreviation/acronym you should do the following:
In the reference, give the full name of the organisation.
In the first in-text citation for the source, write out the name of the organisation in full the first time you mention them, and give the abbreviation in square brackets, e.g.
... clearly stated policy (General Dental Council [GDC], 2019).
The General Dental Council [GDC] (2019, p. 4) state that...
Subsequent citations can just use the abbreviation, e.g.
... measures to improve dental health (GDC, 2019).
The GDC (2019, p. 7) recommend that...
In the reference list spell out the name of the organisation in full, e.g.
General Dental Council. (2019). ...
Do not create an abbreviation or acronym if the organisation is not commonly known by one.
If the organisation is not known by an acronym, you should use their full name in all citations.
If you are citing two works by the same author(s) to make one point...
Give the name(s) once, and the date for each work, in date order and separated by commas:
Recent research (Smith, 2004, 2006) suggests ... or
Recent research (Smith, 2004, p. 4, 2006, p. 25) suggests ...
If the sources are by the same author and published in the same year...
Add letters to the year in both your reference list and in-text citations:
Recent research (Smith, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c) suggests ... or
Recent research (Smith, 2007a, p. 16, 2007b, p. 25, 2007c, p. 313) suggests ...
If the sources are by different authors...
Arrange them in alphabetical order of the first author, as in your reference list, separating each item by a semi-colon:
Recent research (Campbell, 2007; Jones & Evans, 2005; Smith, 2004) suggests ... or
Recent research (Campbell, 2007, p. 57; Jones & Evans, 2005, p. 201; Smith, 2004, p. 14) suggests ...
There is an element of personal judgement when it comes to how frequently you need to cite within your work.
However, your reader must not be left thinking 'where did this idea come from?'.
Rather than repeat an in-text citation, you can write in a way which implies that you are referring to the same source. For example:
In his work, Smith (2007, p. 56) finds that ... Smith goes on to refer to ...
If you are unsure, it is better to cite the source each time you refer to it, to avoid being accused of plagiarism.
To cite a range of pages from a source...
Give the start and end pages of the information you are citing, for example:
... was chaired by Lord Cullen. In total, 106 recommendations were made in the Cullen Report (Cullen, 1990, pp. 387-399) ...
To cite multiple individual pages from a source...
Use pp. to indicate there are multiple pages, and separate the page numbers with a comma, for example:
Lettmaier (2010, pp. 54, 59) asserts that marriage ....
When an author, corporate author, editor or group of authors/editors, has more than one publication in the same year, you should add a lower case letter to the date, for example:
... it has been suggested (Harding, 1986a, p. 80) that ...
... for which evidence has been brought forward (Harding, 1986b, p. 24).
In two recent studies (Harding, 1986a, p. 80; Harding, 1986b, p. 138) it was suggested that ...
In two recent works Harding (1986a, p. 80; 1986b, p. 138) has suggested that .
This is how they would look in the reference list:
Harding, S. (1986a). The instability of the analytical categories of feminist theory. Signs, 11(4), 645-664.
Harding, S. (1986b). The science question in feminism. Cornell University Press.
If you are using multiple sources without a publication date by the same author, you can do the same thing but with n.d. In this instance you should include a dash before the lower case letter. For example:
It can be shown that... (United Nations, n.d.-a)
The United Nations (n.d.-a) state that...
This date format should also be used in the reference list.
This should only be used when the author or group of authors is identical, and where the year of publication is the same.
If an author has worked with two colleagues to produce two articles in the same year but those two co-authors are different for each article, you do not need to do this.
When the first author of a source has the same surname as another first author in your reference list (but they are not the same person), you should include their initials in your citation even if the date of publication differs, for example:
(J. M. Taylor & Neimeyer, 2015, p. 45)
(T. Taylor, 2019, p. 7)
Note that this only applies to the first author in a citation.
If the first authors of two sources share the same surname and initials, your citation should use the standard (Author, Year, p. ) format as initials will not aid your reader in identifying the correct item on your reference list. In this case, if it is necessary to clarify that these are two different people (to avoid confusion, for example) you can include the first name of the first author in the narrative citation, for example:
Sarah Williams (2019, p. 16) stated that... whereas Shonda Williams (2020, p. 9) argued that...
However this is not essential if you do not need to clarify that they are different people. You can simply use (Williams, 2019, p. 16) and (Williams, 2020, p. 9).
Your references for these sources would be done as normal whichever option you use. Do not use full first names in the reference.
If multiple authors within a citation share the same surname, initials are not required, for example:
(Chen & Chen, 2019, p. 6)
If you have multiple sources which are by authors with the same surname and initials, and published in the same year, please see our guidance here.