8.6: Referring to Authors and Titles

When Will You Refer to Authors and Titles?

Research conducted for your technical reports may often use the work of scholars in your field. When you do this, you will need to identify the author and title that you are referring to in the text. Here below are some basic conventions to follow when you refer to sources in the text.

How Do You Refer to Authors Correctly?

The first time that you mention the author, use the full name (but no titles, such as Mr. Ms, or Dr.). If there are three or more authors, use the Latin abbreviated term “et al.” to refer to all authors except the first one (OWL Purdue, n.d.). APA Style requires that you also include the publication date:

• Nikk Ogasa wrote “How AI Can Identify People Even in Anonymized Datasets” in January, 2022.
• Haifeng Wang et al. (2021) in “Engineering 3D Genome Organization” explain that …
• In “Virtual Labs Can Help Students Learn, but They Can’t Replace Hands-on Experience,” Martina Steiner (2022) argues that …

Every time you refer to the author after the first time, use the last name. Never refer to the author by the first name on its own (e.g., Nikk, Haifang, or Martina):

• Ogasa (2022) points out  …
• Wang et al. (2021) expand on their initial findings by …
• Drawing on experience both before and since the COVID-19 pandemic, Steiner  (2022) discusses the …

How Do You Refer to Titles Correctly?

When referring to titles in the body of your report, there are  distinct methods to indicate two types of works, according to APA guidelines:

Titles of shorter works that are published within a larger work—for example, an article in a newspaper, an academic article in a periodical, a chapter in a book—should be written with quotation marks and should use title case capitalization.

Titles of larger works, or works that have smaller articles published within them, are noted in italics and should use title case capitalization.

You can see both types of works in these examples:

• • “We Need to Get beyond the Status Quo in Regulating Big Tech in Canada” is an article written by Kean Birch, published in The National Post on January 10, 2022.
  • “Design of a Novel Simulated ‘Soft’ Mechanical Grasper” is a journal article written by Rugui Wang et al., published in the journal Mechanism and Machine Theory in April 2021.

In reference lists, shorter works typically appear without italics or quotation marks and should use sentence case capitalization. Larger or full works appear in italics and should use title case capitalization.