7 minutes
The APA library guide will give you more examples. Please have a look at this before your assignment.
Using references in text
For APA, you use the authors' surnames only and the year in text. If you are using a direct quote, you will also need to use a page number.
Narrative citations:
If an in-text citation has the authors' names as part of the sentence (that is, outside of brackets) place the year and page numbers in brackets immediately after the name, and use 'and' between the authors' names: Jones and Smith (2020, p. 29)
Parenthetical citations:
If an in-text citation has the authors' names in brackets use "&" between the authors' names : (Jones & Smith, 2020, p. 29)
Note: Some lecturers want page numbers for all citations, while some only want page numbers with direct quotes. Check with your lecturer to see what you need to do for your assignment.
1 author
Smith (2020) found that "the mice disappeared within minutes" (pp. 29-30).
The author stated "the mice disappeared within minutes" (Smith, 2020, p. 29).
2 authors
Jones and Smith (2020) found that "the mice disappeared within minutes" (pp. 29-30).
The authors stated "the mice disappeared within minutes" (Jones & Smith, 2020, p. 29).
For 3 or more authors, use the first author and "et al." for all in-text citations
Green et al.'s (2019) findings indicated that the intervention was not based on evidence from clinical trials.
It appears the intervention was not based on evidence from clinical trials (Green et al., 2019).
The AMA library guide has many more examples. Please have a look at this guide before your assignment.
Superscript numbers
The numbers in text are in superscript1 and occur at the end of the clause in which you used the information. They occur outside “quotation marks,”2 commas,3 (parentheses)4 and full stops.5 However, they occur inside semicolons6; and colons7:
Do not leave a space between the last letter or punctuation mark and the number.
Re-use numbers for the same citation
Citations should be numbered sequentially – that is, the first source you cite is 1, the second source is 2 and so on.
However, once you have given a source a number, it will keep that number throughout your paper. So, if you use your first source again, no matter how often you use it, it is still 1.
Citing more than one work at a time
Use commas to show that more than one work is being cited, and use hyphens for several works that would be numbered sequentially:
These side effects can have implications for the patient's mental health, as numerous studies have shown.1,3,6-9
Relationship between in-text citations and reference list
Your reference list follows the order of the numbers used in the text. The first source you cite in the text is 1 and the reader will look for number 1 in the reference list to find the full citation; the fifth source you use is 5 and the full citation is listed at number 5 in the reference list (and so on).
Using author's names in-text:
If including an author in the text of a sentence, use the surnames of authors and add the citation number after the author’s surname.
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