In-Text & Quotations
Script of Video:
In this video, we will go over requirements for the body of your APA paper, including general in-text citation format such as one author, two authors, three to five authors, and six or more authors; short quotes; long quotes; and paraphrasing.
Please note, all information mentioned is based on the sixth edition of the APA style guide.
Whenever you refer to someone else’s ideas or work, you need to cite it.
The information you will need for an in-text citation is the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page number or page range of quotation.
For a single author the general format would be…
… or if what you’re citing spans multiple pages, you use two P’s followed by the pages.
So, your entry may look like this…
For two authors, follow the basic style for one author but separate the author names using an ampersand.
For three to five authors, list all the authors in the in parentheses the first time you cite the source, using commas to separate and an ampersand before the last author.
In future citations, you only need use the first author's last name followed by "et al."
If the article has six or more authors, use the first author's name followed by et al. for all in-text citations.
There are three ways to incorporate someone else’s ideas into your paper: short quotes, long quotes and paraphrasing.
To incorporate a short quotation into your paper, you must include (in this order) the name of the author, the year of publication, and the page number from which your quotation is drawn from. The page number is preceded by a “p.” to indicate “page”. This citation will directly follow your quotation.
You may include this citation at the end of the short quotation; however, if the author is named in the signal phrase, you must place the author’s name before the quotation, followed by the year of publication in brackets and the page number at the end of the quotation. Here are two examples of how this can be done.
A short quote should never stand alone, but instead be incorporated into a sentence to demonstrate a specific idea.
A long quotation is considered forty words or longer and will be placed in a free-standing block of typewritten lines, omitting quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, indented one half inch from the left margin, in the same place you would begin a new paragraph. Type the entire quotation on the new margin, and indent the first line of any subsequent paragraph within the quotation one half inch from the new margin. Maintain double-spacing throughout. The parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark.
When you are summarizing or paraphrasing an idea, you must make a reference to the author and year of publication in your in-text citation. It is not required to add the page number, but it is encouraged by the APA.
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