Physical Therapy Assistant Research Guide

In-text or parenthetical citations are used within your paper to signal to the reader that you are using an outside source of information. They also act as a guide for your reader to find the full citation on your reference page.

APA uses the Author/Year format for in-text citations.  Include the last name of the author and the information was published.  If the source has no author, use the first element of the full citation (usually the title) instead. If you are summarizing or paraphrasing, you only need to use the author and year. 

If you are directly quoting from the source, you will need to include the author, year, and page number. Use p. to indicate the page number of pp. for multiple pages. 

You can put the in-text citation in parentheses at the end of the quotation or paraphrase or you can use the author's name in the sentence to introduce the quote or paraphrase and then put the page number in parentheses at the end. Both are correct. 

Quote with a signal phrase

According to Jones (1998), "students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time" (p. 199).

Quote without a signal phrase

She stated, "Students often had difficulty using APA style" (Jones, 1998, p. 199), but she did not offer an explanation as to why.

Paraphrase with a signal phrase

According to Jones (1998), APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners.

Paraphrase without a signal phrase

APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998).