IN-TEXT CITATIONS for Paraphrases APA Style

What is an in-text citation? What are paraphrases? What is APA style ?

Why are ladybugs in this presentation? Why not ? They are cute and useful insects.

APA means American Psychological Association, a professional organization. It identifies the source of information in the body of your writing. What is an in-text citation?

For paraphrasing remember : Same meaning but different words. For example, There are 2 and a quarter million people in Dubai. Change to: Dubai has a population of 2.25 million.

You do not need quotation marks for words which are not direct quotations (for example paraphrases or summaries). But you need to note the source of the information. Do it like this : (Author, year) You put it in the body of your writing, not at the bottom of a page or at the end.

Open parenthesis mark Year source published Author’s last name only Closed parenthesis mark Comma, space (Author, year) Page numbers are not noted in APA for paraphrases.

Here is what it looks like. Blah da dee da da da Dubai is the most interesting city in the world (Smith, 2005). Blah da dee da da da. If the citation is at the end of a sentence, put a full stop outside the parenthesis mark.

What about just a number from a table, graph or chart ? For example, you see a table that says 4 ½ million ladybugs live in the UAE. CountryPopulation Ladybugs UAE4.5 million Oman3.2 million Qatar1 million

Did you count the 4 ½ million yourself ? No ! You read it. Write it the same way but add the page number : (Smith, 2005, p. 4) So, you must note the source of your information.

The complete citation (full author name, year, title, city, publisher, & pages) must be in the Bibliography or Reference List at the end of your paper.

If the author’s name appears as part of your text, write only the year in parentheses after the author’s name. For example : Smith (2005) claims that Dubai is the most interesting city in the world. Here is a different situation.

If the author has written 2 or more items in your bibliography in the same year… Put the letter “a” after the year for the first item, “b” for the next item etc. For example : (Smith, 2005a)

What if there are 2 authors ? Write both last names with the ampersand “&” then comma and year. For example : (Smith & Jones, 2005)

What if the source is a website? Again, write the author’s last name and year. But, if there is no author, write the first 3 words of the title of the webpage in italics and the year.

For citations that do not seem to fit the examples, look in a book like this. It is on the library shelf at BF76.7.P Or, enter “APA” in a title or keyword search of the library catalogue to find similar books.

I hope this helps you understand how to write APA in-text citations for paraphrases. Ask your teacher or your friendly librarian if you have any questions.