In-text Citation Examples
Answer
Author unknown
If no author is provided for a journal article or source whose title is type without italics in your reference list, use the first 2-3 words of the title as shown:
“Citation is a task that is essential to scholarly writing” (“Citing Things,” 2012, p. 3).
If no author is provided for a book, magazine, or other source where the title is italicized in your references list, use the first 2-3 words of the title as show here:
"Citation is a task that is essential to scholarly writing" (Citing things, 2012, p. 3).
Publication date unknown
If no publication date is provided – use n.d. in place of the date. This stands for ‘no date’.
“Citation is a task that is essential to scholarly writing” (Carter, n.d., p. 3).
Source with no page numbers
If the source does not have page numbers, you should include a prominent section heading for the area you are citing (if possible) and give the number of the paragraph within that section as para. #.
According to Donaldson (2016), scholarly references and citations are important to establishing a scholarly dialog in any given field (Scholarly Dialog section, para. 12-14).
Source with 2 authors
If there are two authors, list both with an ampersand between them:
“Citation is a task that is essential to scholarly writing” (Carter & Blank, 2012, p. 3).
Source with 3+ authors
If there are three or more authors, list the first author and then et. al.
“Citation is a task that is essential to scholarly writing” (Carter et al., 2012, p. 3).
Author is an organization
If the author is an organization, try to introduce them when presenting the information.
According to the American Library Association, “[c]itation is a task that is essential to scholarly writing” (2012, p. 3).
Note: If the organization has a well-known acronym you can type in that acronym in brackets after the first time you mention their name and then use that acronym in the in-text citation.
Two or more works within the same citation
If you reference two or more works within the same in-text citation, separate them using a semi-colon.
(Carter, 2012, p. 3; Davidson, 2000, p. 62).
Two authors with the same last name in the same citation
If you reference two authors with the same last name, include their first initials.
(D. Carter, 2012, p. 3; S. Carter, 2000, p. 5).
Multiple works with the same author last name and publication year
If you reference two works whose authors have the same last name and which are published in the same year, add an a or b (and so on) to their dates in the references page and then include that in the in-text citation.
(Carter, 2012b, p. 3).
Indirect sources – Referencing information quoted from another source
If you are referencing information in one source that is being quoted from another source you should try to get the original source that the information came from. If you cannot, you should introduce the original author of the information and, in the in-text citation, include the phrase ‘as cited in’ for the source that you retrieved it from. For example: let us assume that I wanted to use a quotation that I found in Hamilton’s book, but Hamilton was quoting it from a different book by Stephens.
Stephens argues that “citing sources is essential to the ongoing scholarly dialog” (As cited in Hamilton, 2015, p. 102).
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