Environmental Systems APA Citing and Database Guide: Parenthetical Citation APA Style

Include a parenthetical citation when you refer to, summarize, paraphrase, or quote from another source. The parenthetical citation must be placed immediately after your source.

Any source information that you provide in your parenthetical citation MUST correspond to the source information on the Reference page. Specifically, whatever word or phrase you include in your parenthetical citation, MUST be the first word(s) that appears at the beginning of the corresponding entry on the Reference page.

When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation.

• This means that the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text.Example: (Jones, 2011).
• For direct quotations, include the page number on which the quotation can be found.  
  • Example: In 2011 the world had its "10^th warmest year since 1880" (Jones, 2011, p.4).
• If you include the author's name in the body of your sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.
  • Example:  Ian Jones says the world had its warmest year since 1880 (2011, p.4).