UL Instruction   References and citations   Citation styles   APA - In text

APA - References in the text

The APA-style uses references in the text, the author-date method. The information in a reference must give the reader enough information to be able to find the correct book, article, chapter or other source in the reference list at the end of the text.

Rules of thumb

  • A reference in the text consists of the surname of the author and the publication year of the cited work, separated by a comma. This information is put in parentheses.
  • When you refer to a specific page, you have to add the pagenumber. Do this always when you cite someone. The page number is preceded by 'p.' and when refering to more pages 'pp.'.
  • When the name of the author is already mentioned in the text, then don’t repeat the name in the reference.
  • When there are two authers, you have to mention both surnames in the first reference, separeted by '&'.
  • With three to five authors, the first time all surnames have to be mentioned, after that only the first authors surname, followed by 'et al.'. When there are more then six authors, you only have to mention the first author.

Example

 

  • In the text:
    Scientific communication will be more interactive by the application of web 2.0-technologies (Hey & Trefethen, 2008, p. 28). 
    or:
    Hey and Trefethen (2008, p. 28) expect that scientific communication will be more interactive by the application of web 2.0-technologies.
  • In the reference list:
    Hey, T., & Trefethen, A. (2008). E-science, cyberinfrastructure, and scholarly communication. In G. M. Olson, A. Zimmerman & N. Bos (Eds.), Scientific collaboration on the internet (pp. 15-31). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

 

See for more and specific examples:

American Psychological Association (2009). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: APA.

See especially page 169 to 179.

APA Style Help
Official help page from APA with frequently asked questions.