APA In-Text Citations: Rules and Examples for APA 7th Edition

APA in-text citations are how you signal to the reader where your information comes from while writing. They appear in the body of your paper, in parentheses, and connect to full entries in the reference list at the end. The basic format is author-date: the author's last name and the year of publication. But the rules get more involved as soon as you have multiple authors, missing information, direct quotes, or unusual source types. This guide covers every APA 7th edition in-text citation rule with worked examples, including the changes from APA 6th that automated tools and older templates still get wrong.

For the broader APA framework, including title page format, reference list rules, and document formatting, see Editor World's complete APA citation guide. For the matching deep-dive on the reference list (alphabetization, source-type templates, the 20-author rule, and DOI formatting), see Editor World's guide to the APA reference list. For the side-by-side comparison with MLA's author-page system, see APA vs MLA format.

The Basic Format

An APA in-text citation has two elements: the author's last name and the year of publication, separated by a comma, in parentheses. The citation appears at the end of the sentence containing the cited information, before the closing punctuation.

Standard format: Recent evidence suggests that financial literacy predicts retirement savings behavior (Fisher, 2024).

The author name and year together do one job: they point the reader to the exact entry in your reference list. Every in-text citation must correspond to a single reference list entry, and every reference list entry must be cited at least once in the body of the paper. APA is strict about this one-to-one relationship.

From this basic format, the rules branch out depending on how many authors the source has, whether the author or date is missing, whether you're quoting directly, and where in the sentence the citation falls.

Citations by Author Type

The author element changes based on how many authors the source has and whether any of them is an organization rather than a person. Each scenario has a specific rule.

One author

Last name and year only. No first name, no initials, no "Dr." or other titles.

Format: (Fisher, 2024)

If you cite multiple works by the same author published in different years, list both years in the same citation, separated by a comma: (Fisher, 2017, 2024). If you cite multiple works by the same author published in the same year, distinguish them with lowercase letters in your reference list. Use those letters in your in-text citations: (Fisher, 2024a) and (Fisher, 2024b).

Two authors

Both names appear in every citation. Use an ampersand (&) in parenthetical citations and the word "and" in narrative citations.

Parenthetical: Risk tolerance varies by gender and income (Fisher & Yao, 2017).

Narrative: Fisher and Yao (2017) found that income uncertainty moderates the relationship between gender and risk tolerance.

Three or more authors

Use only the first author's last name followed by "et al." (not italicized, with a period after "al" but not after "et"). This applies from the first citation onward in APA 7th. This is the rule most often confused with APA 6th, which required all author names on the first citation and switched to "et al." only on subsequent citations.

Parenthetical: The intervention reduced depressive symptoms across all three sites (Hassan et al., 2023).

Narrative: Hassan et al. (2023) reported that the intervention reduced depressive symptoms across all three sites.

There's one exception. If shortening to "et al." would make two different sources look identical (for example, if two sources both have a first author named Smith and were both published in 2020), include enough additional authors to disambiguate.

Group or organization authors

When the author is an organization rather than a person, use the full organization name. If the organization has a widely recognized abbreviation, you can introduce it on the first citation and use it on all subsequent citations.

First citation: Recent guidelines emphasize the importance of trauma-informed care (American Psychological Association [APA], 2023).

Subsequent citations: Practitioners are encouraged to apply these principles across settings (APA, 2023).

If the organization has no widely recognized abbreviation, use the full name every time.

No author

Use the title of the source in place of the author. Format the title the way it appears in your reference list: italicized for books, reports, and other standalone works; in quotation marks for articles, chapters, and webpages.

Standalone work (italics): The report documents widening disparities across counties ( State of Rural Health, 2022).

Article or chapter (quotation marks): Median income rose more slowly than housing costs ("Wage Growth in the Recovery," 2021).

If the source is explicitly labeled as authored by "Anonymous," use that word in place of an author name: (Anonymous, 2018).

No date

Use "n.d." (no date) in place of the year. This comes up most often with websites and online resources that don't include a publication date.

Format: The agency's mission statement emphasizes community engagement (Smith, n.d.).

Authors with the same last name

If two of your sources have authors with the same last name, include the first initials in every citation to distinguish them, even if the years are different.

Format: Recent studies have addressed both factors (J. Smith, 2020; R. Smith, 2022).

Parenthetical vs Narrative Citations

APA in-text citations come in two forms, and you can use either depending on how you want to frame the sentence.

A parenthetical citation places both the author and the year in parentheses, typically at the end of the sentence. Use parenthetical citations when the focus is on the information rather than on who produced it.

Parenthetical example: Adolescents who participated in the program reported lower anxiety scores at follow-up (Hassan et al., 2023).

A narrative citation integrates the author's name into the sentence as a grammatical subject, with only the year in parentheses immediately after the name. Use narrative citations when the focus is on who produced the work, when you're discussing several findings from the same source, or when you want to vary sentence structure across a paragraph.

Narrative example: Hassan et al. (2023) reported that adolescents who participated in the program had lower anxiety scores at follow-up.

Both forms are equally acceptable in APA. Writers who use only parenthetical citations tend to produce paragraphs that read as a series of facts followed by parenthetical tags. Mixing the two forms makes prose more readable and allows you to vary emphasis. Use whichever serves the sentence.

Direct Quotes and Page Numbers

When you quote a source word for word, the in-text citation must include the page number where the quoted material appears. This is one of the strictest rules in APA and one of the most commonly missed.

Short quotes (under 40 words)

Place the quote in double quotation marks within your sentence. The citation includes author, year, and page number (using "p." for one page, "pp." for a range).

Parenthetical: Researchers concluded that "the program produced sustained reductions in symptom severity" (Hassan et al., 2023, p. 47).

Narrative: Hassan et al. (2023) concluded that "the program produced sustained reductions in symptom severity" (p. 47).

For a page range: (Hassan et al., 2023, pp. 47-49).

For sources without page numbers (websites, ebooks, audio recordings), use a paragraph number, heading, or section name to point the reader to the location of the quoted material.

• Paragraph number: (Smith, 2020, para. 3)
• Heading: (Smith, 2020, Methods section)
• Heading and paragraph: (Smith, 2020, Discussion, para. 2)

Block quotes (40 or more words)

Quotes of 40 or more words are formatted as block quotes. The rules are different from short quotes:

• Start the quote on a new line
• Indent the entire block half an inch from the left margin
• Do not use quotation marks
• Maintain double spacing throughout the block
• Place the citation after the closing punctuation of the quote, not before it

Format:

Notice that the period for the block quote comes before the parenthetical citation, not after. This is the opposite of the rule for short quotes, where the period comes after the closing parenthesis. The block quote rule is consistent across APA, MLA, and Chicago and is one of the small formatting details that distinguishes a polished paper from a hasty one.

Citing Multiple Sources at Once

When you want to attribute a single point to multiple sources, list them in a single set of parentheses, separated by semicolons, in alphabetical order by first author's last name.

Format: Studies across multiple cohorts have produced consistent results (Hassan et al., 2023; Jones, 2018; Smith & Patel, 2020).

For multiple works by the same author, list the years together, separated by commas, in chronological order: (Fisher, 2017, 2020, 2024). The author's name does not repeat.

When mixing single-author and multi-author sources, alphabetize by the first author's last name in each citation. Don't reorder by year or by author count.

Secondary Sources

A secondary source citation is one where you're citing source A as discussed in source B, because you don't have direct access to source A. APA strongly prefers that you find and cite the original source whenever possible. Secondary citations should be used sparingly and only when the original is genuinely unavailable.

Format: Hassan and colleagues' findings were extended by later cross-cultural work (as cited in Patel, 2022).

The reference list entry is for the source you actually read (Patel, 2022 in this example), not for the original source (Hassan and colleagues). This is the reverse of how it often feels, and it's the source of many secondary citation errors. You cannot include in your reference list a source you have not read.

Personal Communications

Personal communications include emails, interviews, lectures, conference presentations not available in proceedings, phone calls, and personal conversations. They have a unique rule in APA: they are cited in-text only and do not appear in the reference list, because the reader cannot retrieve them.

Format: The committee will adopt revised reporting guidelines starting in the next academic year (J. Smith, personal communication, March 15, 2024).

Use first initials with the last name, the words "personal communication," and the full date of the communication. Personal communications should be used sparingly. Information that's important enough to support a major claim should usually come from a published, retrievable source.

Common APA In-Text Citation Mistakes

The same handful of errors appears across nearly every paper that comes back marked up for APA in-text citation issues. Each one is correctable in a single editing pass once you know to look for it.

1. Forgetting the page number on direct quotes

Every direct quote requires a page number (or paragraph or section indicator for sources without page numbers). Paraphrasing does not require a page number, though APA encourages including one when it helps the reader locate the material. Direct quotes without page numbers are the single most common in-text citation error.

2. Using all author names on the first citation when there are three or more authors

This is the APA 6th rule that should not be applied to APA 7th papers. APA 7th uses "et al." from the first citation onward whenever a source has three or more authors. Listing all six authors of a source on first citation is a clear signal that the writer is applying outdated rules.

3. Italicizing "et al."

"Et al." is not italicized in APA 7th, though some older style guides treated it as a Latin abbreviation requiring italics. The period goes after "al" only, not after "et."

4. Mixing "&" and "and" incorrectly

Parenthetical citations use the ampersand: (Fisher & Yao, 2017). Narrative citations use the word: Fisher and Yao (2017). These don't transfer. (Fisher and Yao, 2017) is incorrect, as is "Fisher & Yao (2017) found..." in running prose.

5. Citing personal communications in the reference list

Personal communications are cited in-text only. They do not appear in the reference list, ever. Including an email or interview in the reference list is a common error in papers where the writer relied on personal sources.

6. Missing the year

Citations that include only the author's name without the year, or that omit the year on second or third mentions of a source, violate the APA author-date format. Every APA in-text citation needs both elements.

7. Using "et al." for a two-author source

"Et al." is for three or more authors. A source with exactly two authors always lists both names, every time it's cited. Using "Hassan et al." for a paper by Hassan and Patel is incorrect.

8. Mismatched in-text citations and reference list entries

Every in-text citation must have a corresponding entry in the reference list, and every reference list entry must be cited at least once in the body. The mismatch usually creeps in during revision: a paragraph gets deleted but the reference stays, or a new source gets added to the body but never makes it to the references. The final APA pass should verify the one-to-one correspondence systematically. For the full guide to formatting the matching reference list entries, see Editor World's article on the APA reference list.

When Professional APA Editing Helps

APA in-text citations are the kind of work that takes attention to detail across every page of the document. Even careful writers miss the edition-specific changes, the parenthetical-versus-narrative punctuation rules, and the mismatches between in-text citations and reference list entries that creep in during revision. Editor World's academic editing services include APA 7th edition review at the in-text citation level. Editors hold advanced degrees in psychology, education, and the social sciences where APA is the disciplinary default. 100% human editing, no AI at any stage. The same APA standard is applied across the dissertation editing, journal article editing, and essay editing services.

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Frequently Asked Questions About APA In-Text Citations

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