7.19 Creating In-Text Citations and References

Now that we know what to cite and how to quote and paraphrase, we must decide what format to use for our in-text citations and references. Your instructor will tell you whether they prefer MLA, APA, Chicago or another style format.

Rather than covering every citation rule, let’s just discuss the purpose of each one.

Creating an In-Text Citation

An in-text citation tells the reader where the information in a particular sentence came from. If the in-text citation is done well, the reader can use it to find the full reference in the bibliography, then easily find the exact spot where the idea/quote came from.

In MLA citation, the in-text citation consists of the author’s last name and the page number (or paragraph number for sources with no page numbers). If you’ve already used the author’s name in the sentence, you don’t have to repeat it in the in-text citation. It looks like this:

or this:

If you’re using APA citation, you add the date that the work was created. As with MLA, you don’t have to repeat the name of the author if you’ve already said it in the sentence.  It looks like this:

or this:

If you don’t know the author’s name, simply put the first few words of the title. If you don’t know the date, write “n.d.” for No Date. If you don’t know the page number, put in the paragraph number.

Creating a Reference

The purpose of a reference, however, is to give enough information for the reader to find the source.

Here’s an example of an MLA reference:

Here’s an example of an APA reference:

Attribution

“Creating In-Text Citations and References” from Business Writing For Everyone by Arley Cruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.