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PSAP (LSEHD) Doctoral Students Library Guide

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In-Text Citations

In-Text Citations

APA Style requires that you cite an author within the body of your paper in addition to having a full citation on the references page. You can directly quote an author or paraphrase an author. 

What about Websites?

Citing a website within text can be tricky because a website may not have a traditional page number, author, or year. In this scenario, you can do the following:

  • Instead of an author, use a short version of the title in quotations.
  • If there is no date, use the abbreviation "nd."
  • In place of a page number, give a name of the section of the website, and a paragraph number.

Here is an example:

("National Center for Education Statistics," n.d, What's New section, para 2).

Citing a Source Cited in Your Source

Sometimes you may use information cited in another source. For example, you may want to use information that the author "Smith" cited from the author "Jackson." There are two possible ways of handling it. You can:

  1. Find the article written by "Jackson" and cite directly from that author.
  2. Name "Jackson" as a source in your paraphrase, but only cite "Smith" in the references page.

Here is an example:

     Jackson's study (as cited in Smith, 2009) suggests....

You would only need to cite "Smith" in your references page, since this is the author you have read.

Direct Quoting

You can directly quote from an author as long as you include the author's name, the year the book/article was published, and the page number of the quotation.

Here is an example:

Just as in direct service, administrative, or community organizing practice, we become effective policy advocates only as we learn key concepts and develop pivotal skills” (Jansson, 1999, p. 19).

 Make sure that Jansson's work is fully cited in your references page.

Paraphrasing

Here is an example of a citation with a single author:

Policy advocates need to have a clear idea as to what kind of changes they would like to see in a specific agency, community, or within society as a whole (Jannsen, 1999).

Remember to provide a full citation of the author's work on your references page.

Here is an example of a citation with two authors:

Social work is a profession with a dual focus (Popple & Leighninger, 2011).