Overview | Harvard | IEEE | APA | Chicago | MLA | Vancouver | Citation Tools
The American Psychological Association (APA) style is predominantly used in the fields of psychology, health, and social sciences. The APA referencing style uses an author-date system. The sources are cited by providing the surname of the author and the year of publication in brackets.
1. APA in-text citation examples
In the following example, we are stating that a recent study has shown that students use generative AI in their papers frequently. This idea comes from a paper authored by Ethan Jones published in the year 2014. There are two ways you can cite the paper in APA referencing style. You can either cite at the end of the sentence or integrate it into the sentence.
✔ Citation at the end of the sentence. Both surname and year within brackets.
A recent research showed that students use generative AI in more than 90% of their assignments (Jones, 2014).
✔ Citation integrated into the text. Surname outside the bracket and year within brackets.
Jones (2014) showed that students use generative AI in more than 90% of their assignments.
2. Citing multiple authors in APA style
If the source has two authors then you can specify the surnames of both authors followed by the year of publication. If the source has three or more authors then you have to use the surname of the first author followed by ‘et al’, which stands for ‘and all’.
| Single author | AI has caused significant ethical concerns in recent years (Smith, 2003) |
| Two authors | AI has caused significant ethical concerns in recent years (Smith & Jones, 2003) |
| Three or more authors | AI has caused significant ethical concerns in recent years (Smith et al., 2003) |
3. Multiple sources at the same point
Sometimes you may have to support your statement with multiple sources. You can do this by separating the sources using a semicolon.
✔ Multiple sources separated by a semicolon
Obesity is a global pandemic with over one-third of the world’s population being classified as overweight (Brown, 2018; Walker et al., 2013; Martin & Jones, 1998).
4. Multiple sources from the same author and year
You can differentiate multiple papers from the same author published in the same year by adding a unique alphabet to each source. In the following example, you can see that we have three publications from Williams published in the year 2014. We have differentiated the references by adding the letters, ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’.
✔ Sources from the same author from the same year differentiated using alphabets
It has been widely accepted that that there is a strong association between obesity and Vitamin D (Williams, 2014a; Williams, 2014b; Williams, 2014c).
5. Direct quotes from sources
If you are making a direct quote from a paper word-for-word, you must include the page number or page numbers at the end of the statement. In the following example, we have used the exact text from a paper, and hence while citing the paper we have included the page number at the end. Please note that ‘p’ is used for a single page and ‘pp.’ is used for multiple pages.
✔ Direct quote from a paper – page number(p) mentioned in the citation
As Wilson et al. (2020) states, “More than 70% of papers rejected by scientific journals are written by non-native English speakers” (p. 23).
✔ Direct quote from a paper – page numbers(pp) mentioned in the citation
As Wilson et al. (2020) states, “More than 70% of papers rejected by scientific journals are written by non-native English speakers” (pp. 23-24).
6. Reference list
You must include a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text. You must list all sources in the reference list in alphabetical order. The first line of your reference should be aligned with the left margin and each line after that should be indented half an inch from the left margin.
Example below shows a list of references formatted in APA style. The following reference list includes a journal, a book, a website, and a conference proceeding. If you use a good citation tool, the reference list will be automatically generated for you. If you choose to format the references manually, please read this blog, you will find formatting rules for various sources.
7. Summary
If you have any questions, please drop a comment below, and we will answer as soon as possible. We also recommend you to refer to our other blogs on academic writing tools, academic writing resources, academic writing phrases, research paper examples and research paper writing tips which are relevant to the topic discussed in this blog.
