General Information About In-Text Citation

When you quote a source or take some information from it in your academic paper, you need to cite this source properly. It means that you acknowledge that the idea is not yours but belongs to someone else. Your reader can find this source and learn more from it if they are interested.

In-test citations are provided in parenthesis, where you write the name of the author and the year the source was published. You also need to indicate the page number if the source has the pages enumerated. For example, the in-text citation in the APA format looks like this: (Morgan, 2019, p. 38).

Why Are In-Text Citations Important?

The main purpose of every in-text citation is to point out where the information was taken from.

Citations help to do the following:

• You avoid plagiarism when you acknowledge the contribution of the author.
• Readers can check your statements and continue the research of their own.
• You demonstrate your proficiency in using the necessary literature in your field of study.

The aim of any academic writing is communication among scholars on the topics they are interested in. They share their ideas and opinions within and between fields of study. When you show how well your research ideas and outcomes correspond to the existing sources, you help keep this communication going on.

When Do We Use In-Text Citations?

You have to include citations in your text every time you use the ideas from the source, whether you quote them directly or paraphrase the thought you apply to your research.

When you quote something, you use the initial author’s words without any changes. You introduce them with the help of a signal phrase. You use quotation marks for these words and the parentheses after them where you indicate the page of the source where you have found these words.

For example, the direct quote in APA looks like this:

Psychology is a field of human science that allows for “deep penetration into the human mind with the purpose of its thorough investigation” (Pattison, 1984, p. 321).

When you use paraphrasing, you convey the information from a source in your own words. However, the idea you are speaking about is not yours, so in-text citation is also important here, or you will be accused of plagiarism. You also need to include the number of pages where you have found the idea to show a reader that you are taking credit for someone else’s idea but not yours.

For example, let’s paraphrase the same phrase in the APA style as the following:

As a field of human science, psychology helps understand the human mind in depth via thorough research (Pattison, 1984, p. 321).

In-Text Citations: Types and Features

Citation styles may differ by the format of citations you use in them. The common thing is that citations direct the reader to a reference list to see more complete information about the source. The most widely used formats are author-date and author-page citations.

Author-date citations are used in Harvard, Chicago author-date, and APA. They consist of the author's last name, publication year, and the page number. You can use parenthetical and narrative citations in both types. Parenthetical citations mean that you put the author’s name and all other information in parentheses. When you use narrative citations, you include the author’s name in your sentence and all the rest in parentheses.

Let’s consider the examples of both types of citations in the most commonly used citation formats.

APA, which uses the author-date format, has the parenthetical citation as the following:

✔️ “The results of the experiment show a high correlation between the variables” (Molder, 2011, p. 354).

The narrative citation in the same format will look like the following:

✔️ Molder argues that the results of the experiment show a high correlation between the variables (2011, p. 354).

Using the author-page format, MLA requires parenthetical citation as the following:

✔️ “The results of the experiment show a high correlation between the variables” (Molder 354).

The narrative citation here will have a format like this:

✔️ Molder argues that the results of the experiment show a high correlation between the variables (354).

It is worth mentioning that there is a format of footnotes used in the Chicago style and its bibliography. It is usually referred to as in-text citations. However, the citation is placed in the note at the bottom of the page but not within the text.

Final Thoughts

Here is only general information about the types and ways of using in-text citations. You need to know that they differ in each formatting style. You must be attentive when citing your sources in quotes or paraphrases. If not cited, the idea that has been expressed by someone else will be considered plagiarism. If you are a student and do the academic writing task, you may be punished for it, and your overall scores will go down.

Even if you use someone else’s ideas, you can comment on them and your own conclusions. Though never leave the idea without the reference to whom it belongs. On the other side, you need to avoid overciting, so do not cite the ideas that belong to common knowledge.