Referencing style

In-text citations

30 September 2023

HOW TO APPLY

Summarised or paraphrased material

Research on authoritative child-rearing practices indicates … (Cole & Cole, 2001).

According to Cole and Cole (2001), authoritarian parents …

Use an in-text citation whenever you summarise, paraphrase or quote directly from another source.

Parenthetical citation: (Taylor, 2019)
Narrative citation: Taylor (2019)

Use the author last name and the year of publication either inside parentheses or with the author name in the narrative of your document and the year in parentheses.

Parenthetical citation: (Cole & Cole, 2001)
Narrative citation: Cole and Cole (2001)

For two authors, the “and” is written as an ampersand (&) inside parentheses.

Parenthetical citation: (Simpson et al., 2020)
Narrative citation: Simpson et al. (2020)

For three or more authors, use the first author last name followed by “et al.”

See also:
- Appropriate Level of Citation (APA Style website) for general guidance on citing sources.
- Overcitation and “Delayed Citation” (YouTube) for citing a long paraphrase from a single source (ca. 4 min, part of a webinar from an APA Style expert).
- Citing Authors With the Same Surname (APA Style website) if the first authors of multiple references share the same surname but have different initials.
- Author Variations for more details and examples.

Citing a part of a source

Teenagers greatly influenced musical tastes in 1950s’ New Zealand (Bourke, 2010, Chapter 6).

Bourke (2010, pp. 3–4) highlights the importance of patriotism …

In a long or complex work (a book for example), you may indicate the part of the work to help a reader locate the section (Publication Manual, Section 8.23).
See Citing Specific Parts of a Source (APA Style website), Direct Quotation of Material Without Page Numbers (APA Style website) and Book Chapters: What to Cite (APA Style blog) on ways to cite a specific part of a source, such as a page, chapter, table or video time stamp.

More than one source in text

Many studies suggest … (Davies, 1990; Humphries & Peters, 2005; Weber, 2004)

Effects on human development … (Johnson, n.d., 2000, 2005, in press; Robertson, 2000a, 2000b)

List citations within parentheses alphabetically, separated by a semicolon.
List works by the same author in order of date of publication, for example (Johnson, n.d., 2000, 2005, in press).
For works by the same author published in the same year, the references are identified by the use of a, b, etc. Give a to the reference whose title comes first alphabetically, b to the one whose title comes next and so on, for example (Robertson, 2002a, 2002b).
See Author Variations for more information and examples.

Quotations

Quotation with a narrative citation: Bell et al. (2001) define environmental psychology as “the study of the molar relationships between behaviour and experience and the built and natural environment” (p. 6).

Quotation with a parenthetical citation: Environmental psychology is “the study of the molar relationships between behaviour and experience and the built and natural environment” (Bell et al., 2001, p. 6).

If you quote the exact words of authors:

Enclose the quotation in quotation marks if there are 39 words or fewer.
Use a block quotation if there are 40 or more words – instructions and examples are towards the bottom of Quotations (APA Style website).
Include the author, year of publication and page numbers in text.
- If page numbers are not available in the source, identify the location of the quotation using any available identifiers. Section names, headings and paragraph numbers are often good choices. For example:
  para. 16
  Enterprise Attributes section, paras. 14–15
  “Positive Ageing” section, para. 5
  - The last example has ” ” to indicate that the heading or section name is shortened, as it is too long or unwieldy to cite in full.
Omit ellipses (…) from the beginning and end of a quotation unless the original source includes an ellipsis.
Further explanation and examples are at Quotations (APA Style website).
See also:
- Quotations From Research Participants (APA Style website)
- How to Cite Your Own Translations (APA Style blog).