How To Correctly Organize In-Text Citations In An APA Research Paper

APA (American Psychological Association) is one of the most popular styles of writing. If you do not know how to write in this style then you will have difficulty putting together the contents of your essay, dissertation, term paper or other college assignment. Even if you have never written any other paper in this style, you can find assistance online. The APA style establishes written communication standards concerning the citing of references, style of writing, content organization and preparing manuscript for publication in social sciences such as criminology, sociology, linguistics, psychology, and economics. It is also used in nursing and business studies.

Parenthetical citation in-text

In-text citations are vital component of every research paper. They provide a reliable way of acknowledging other author’s ideas. Every source which appears as in text citation must have corresponding entry in details at the end of the paper being written. The requirement to include all required elements in citation allows other researchers to track the references which were used in the paper and be able to locate those resources for further information.

Three information pieces must be included in citation after quoting work by another writer; that is, last name of author, the year it was published and page numbers of the material quoted. All these citations should be separated by commas. The page should be abbreviated as ‘p’, a period, then the page number. The basic structure thus is; author, year it was published, then page number. For example, (Jacobs, 2014, p.67). If the material quoted is from two or more pages then two lower case p’p’ should be used. That is, author, year it was published, pp.123-125. Example, (Jacobs, 2014, p.123-125).

Citing multiple authors for single source?

There are various guidelines which should be followed when you want to cite multiple authors for any one source. The author’s source should be separated by commas. Depending on citation instance and location, & (ampersand) then the word ‘and’ or ‘et al” should where appropriate be used.

When to use ampersand?

Ampersand should be used only in parenthetical citations in-text. The ampersand separates last, second all the way to last author. For example, (Stoerig, Jennes, Van Leeuwen & Niccolai, p.76)

When to use ‘and’

‘And’ should be only used in [paragraph or sentence. You should not use it parenthetical in text citation. It should be used to separate the last and second all the way to last author. For example, Stoerig, Jennes, Van Leeuwen and Niccolai, observed that….

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