Family Science 450

APA style uses a parenthetical, author-date format for in-text citations. After a quotation or reference, add parentheses containing the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page number of the work being cited. Use a single "p." for one-page, and a "pp." for multi-page quotations.

Example: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (Seuss, 2007, p. 7).

If you use more than one work by the same author published in the same year, use the letters a, b, etc., after the year.

Example: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (Seuss, 2007a, p. 7).

If a reference list includes more than one author with the same last name, add the first initials to in-text citations.

Example: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (D. Seuss, 2007, p. 7).

If two or more authors wrote the work, see the "Basic APA Citations" table below.

If using the author's name in your text, do not include it in the parentheses.

Example: In his scholarly study, Dr. Seuss (2007) observed that "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (pp. 7-8).

If no author name is available, use the first few words of the reference list entry (usually the title) and the year. Use quotation marks around titles of articles or web pages and italicize titles of books, periodicals, or reports. Treat in-text citations to legal materials such as court cases, statutes, and legislation the same as works with no author.

Example: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" (Fox in Socks, 2007).

If no page numbers are available, as is the case with some electronic journals, paragraph numbers and/or headings should be referenced.

Example: Smith and Jackson (2012) found that no significant effects resulted from their planned intervention (Discussion section, para. 5).

Cite in text the first few words of the reference list entry (usually the webpage's title) and the year it was published online. Use double quotation marks around the title or abbreviated title, like this example:   ("All 33 Chile Miners," 2010).

Section 8.9 of the APA Style Manual covers Personal Communications:

"Works that cannot be recovered by readers are cited in the text as personal communications. Personal communications include emails, text messages, online chats or direct messages, personal interviews, telephone conversations, live speeches, unrecorded classroom lectures, memos, letters, messages from nonarchived discussion groups or online bulletin boards, and so on.

Use a personal communication citation only when a recoverable source is not available. For example, if you learned about a topic via a classroom lecture, it would be preferable to cite the research on which the instructor based the lecture. However, if the lecture contained original content not published elsewhere, cite the lecture as a personal communication."

Examples:
T. K. Jones (personal communication, April 18, 2001)
(J. A. Smith, personal communication, September 25, 1999)

Short overview from the APA Style team

Note that APA provides specific guidelines for other types of unique sources. See below for how to cite archival and primary sources as well as how to quote research participants. 

How to cite archival and primary sources

How to quote research participants