APA Citation Format is a set of formal rules written by the American Psychological Association for documenting sources when writing research papers for any of the social science disciplines.
The most recent set of guidelines can be found in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association released in July 2009. The purpose of the manual is to provide a set of formal conventions that ensure clarity of communication, aid reader comprehension, avoid plagiarism and build accurate reference citations.
The Basics
When writing a research paper, APA style requires that citations are located both in the text of the body, as well as in a formal reference list section of the document. This article provides some general guidelines on how in-text citations should be formatted. For a more in-depth explanation, consult pages 169-179 of the Publication Manual.
For any in-text citation (in the body of the report) there should be an entry in the reference list, and the same goes for the reverse as well – any reference list entry should match an in-text citation.
When using APA format follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that the author’s last name and the year of publication for the source document should appear in the text like (Richards, 2001). A more complete citation should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.
When writing your report, if you’re just referring to an idea from another source, but not directly quoting the material, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication in your in-text citation.
In-Text Citation Formatting
- Always capitalize the author’s name and initials: P. Smith
- If you refer to the title of a source, capitalize any word that is greater than four letters long: Writing For Change. Note that this differs from the corresponding entry in your References list, in that entry only the first word is capitalized: Writing for change.
- Always capitalize the first word after a colon or dash: The Search For Life: The Case for Martian Water.
- Always capitalize both words in a hyphenated compound word: Mars: In-Depth
- Italicize or underline the titles of longer works such as books and documentaries: Space Exploration in the Future
- Put quotation marks around the titles of shorter works like journal or magazine articles: “Saturn’s Rings of Dust”
If you are quoting directly from a work, include the author, year of publication and the page number for the reference (precede the page number with a “p”.) Introduce the quotation by including the author’s last name followed by the date of publication in parenthesis.
For example: According to Smith (2001), “astronauts often had difficulty managing stress during flight training” (p 44).
If the quotation is longer than 40 words, place the text in a free-standing block of typewritten lines, and leave out the quotation marks. The long length quotation should be started on a new line, indented five spaces from the left margin. Any subsequent lines should keep the same margin, maintaining double spacing throughout. The referenced page number should appear after the closing punctuation mark.
If you are paraphrasing an idea from another source you only have to reference the author and year of publication in your in-text reference. Including a page number reference is preferred, but not obligatory.
In summary, formatting in-text citations in a research paper following APA Citation Format is not difficult once you know the rules of the road. With enough practice the citation formatting should become second nature.
