When you are conducting scholarly research, you will need to create in-text citations--which include parenthetical and narrative formats--in order to give proper credit to theories, ideas, and quotations. APA Style follows the author-date citation system when citing references, and any in-text citations must be located as an entry on your reference list.
In order to create an in-text citation, you need two specific components:
In parenthetical citations, the author and date of the cited work are encased in a set of parentheses, separated by a comma. For example:
In terms of placement, a parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence, prior to the period or other end punctuation.
A narrative citation incorporates the author and date of publication into the body of the text, which can be a smoother reading experience, especially for citing quotations. In the narrative citation, a parentheses appears around the date of publication immediately after the author's name. For example:
There are cases where the author and date will appear in the same sentence; in these instances you will not use a parentheses. For example:
In-text citations can be complicated, depending on what format you're using in your writing. To learn more about specific guidelines, please refer to chapter eight of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. You can also visit the APA Style webpage on in-text citations, here.