Citing your sources in the text is a very important part of both the APA style and academic style in general. Citing your sources in the text shows your reader where you have obtained your information.

When citing quotes from sources you need:

• the author;
• the year;
• and, if directly quoting, the page number.

All three will go into parenthesis. Where that parenthesis goes depends on how you are quoting, that is, how you are blending the quote into your paper. We will now show three ways to incorporate quotes into your paper. For example:

Dr. McLean (2004) notes that "students are eager to learn new material and participate in academic life" (p. 5).

The author's name, in this case, is used to introduce the material. When this is done you follow the name with the date in parenthesis. The page number is then put in another parenthesis at the end of the sentence.

Key Resources
Citing Indirect or Secondary Sources

For quotes less than three lines long, the following diagram shows you how to cite them in text.

If your quote is longer than three lines, this next diagram shows you how to cite it in text.

Citing paraphrases and summaries is similar to citing quotations except that you do not need to include the page number. That said, including the page number is useful and will help your reader find the information or passage in the original text.