An in-text citation is a short reference you place inside the body of your paper, right next to the information you borrowed, so readers can trace it back to the full source on your references or works cited page. The exact format depends on which style guide you’re using, but most academic writing follows either APA (author-date) or MLA (author-page) style. Once you understand the basic pattern for each, citing gets mechanical.
APA Style: Author and Date
APA citations pair the author’s last name with the year of publication. You can do this two ways: parenthetical or narrative.
A parenthetical citation places both pieces of information in parentheses at the end of the sentence, before the period:
- Falsely balanced news coverage can distort the public’s perception of expert consensus on an issue (Koehler, 2016).
A narrative citation weaves the author’s name into your sentence and puts only the year in parentheses, immediately after the name:
- Koehler (2016) noted the dangers of falsely balanced news coverage.
In rare cases, both the author and date appear naturally in the sentence itself. When that happens, skip the parentheses entirely: “In 2016, Koehler noted the dangers of falsely balanced news coverage.”
You can also place a parenthetical citation mid-sentence if the borrowed idea only applies to part of the sentence, not the whole thing. Just insert it right after the relevant clause.
MLA Style: Author and Page Number
MLA works similarly, but instead of the year, you provide the page number where the information appears. The author’s last name and the page number go in parentheses with no comma between them:
- The character’s moral decline becomes visible through her changing surroundings (Smith 42).
If you mention the author by name in your sentence, only the page number goes in parentheses:
- Smith argues that the character’s moral decline becomes visible through her changing surroundings (42).
Notice there’s no “p.” before the page number in MLA. APA does use “p.” when citing a specific page in a direct quote, but MLA keeps it bare.
Handling Multiple Authors
The rules change depending on how many authors a source has. In APA style:
- One author: Use the name in every citation. (Luna, 2020)
- Two authors: List both names every time. Use “&” inside parentheses but “and” in narrative text. So you’d write (Salas & D’Agostino, 2020) in a parenthetical citation, but “Salas and D’Agostino (2020)” in a narrative one.
- Three or more authors: Use only the first author’s name followed by “et al.” in every citation, including the very first one. (Martin et al., 2020)
MLA follows a similar pattern. For sources with three or more authors, use the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” and the page number: (Martin et al. 115).
One wrinkle in APA: if two different sources would shorten to the same “et al.” form (say, both start with Johnson and were published in the same year), spell out as many author names as needed to tell them apart.
Direct Quotes vs. Paraphrases
Both direct quotes and paraphrases need in-text citations. The difference is that direct quotes also require a page number (or paragraph number for online sources without pages), even in APA style, which normally only uses the year.
For a short direct quote in APA, include the page number after the year:
- (Koehler, 2016, p. 5)
In MLA, since you’re already providing a page number, the format stays the same whether you’re quoting or paraphrasing. Just make sure the page number points to where the quoted material actually appears.
For quotes longer than 40 words (APA) or four lines of prose (MLA), use a block quote: indent the entire passage, skip the quotation marks, and place the parenthetical citation after the final period rather than before it.
When Information Is Missing
Not every source comes with a tidy author name and date. APA has clear fallback rules for each scenario.
If there’s no author, move the title into the author position. Your in-text citation uses a shortened version of the title and the year: (“Shorter Title,” 2021). Do not substitute “Anonymous” unless the work is literally signed “Anonymous.”
If there’s no date, replace the year with “n.d.” (short for “no date”) in both the in-text citation and the reference list entry: (Johnson, n.d.). If both the author and date are missing, combine the two fixes: (“Shorter Title,” n.d.).
MLA handles missing authors the same way, using the title (or a shortened version) in place of the author name. For a source with no page numbers, like most websites, simply omit the page number from the parenthetical citation.
Citing Generative AI
If you used a tool like ChatGPT or another generative AI to help produce content in your paper, current MLA guidelines say to cite it using the title of the prompt (or a shortened version) in parentheses, similar to how you’d cite a work with no traditional author:
- Nature “often mirrors the personalities or inner states of the characters” (“Describe the theme”).
Check with your instructor or institution before citing AI-generated content, since policies on whether it’s even permitted vary widely. But if you do use it, treat the prompt as your identifying reference point.
Where Punctuation Goes
Punctuation placement trips up a lot of writers. The rule is straightforward for both APA and MLA: the period goes after the closing parenthesis, not before it.
- Correct: This finding has been widely replicated (Koehler, 2016).
- Wrong: This finding has been widely replicated. (Koehler, 2016)
The exception is block quotes, where the period comes before the citation because the quoted material is set apart from your text.
For narrative citations, the sentence flows normally and ends with a period wherever it naturally would. The parenthetical year right after the author’s name doesn’t change your punctuation: “Koehler (2016) noted the dangers of falsely balanced coverage.”
Quick Reference: APA vs. MLA Format
- APA parenthetical: (Author, Year) for paraphrases; (Author, Year, p. #) for direct quotes
- APA narrative: Author (Year) followed by your sentence
- MLA parenthetical: (Author Page) with no comma
- MLA narrative: Author states “quote” (Page)
- Three or more authors (both styles): First Author et al.
- No author: Use the title in place of the author name
- No date (APA): Use n.d. in place of the year
If you’re using a different style like Chicago or Turabian, the logic is similar, but those systems often use footnotes or endnotes instead of parenthetical citations. Check your assignment guidelines to confirm which style is required before you start writing.