What are in-text citations?
APA is known as an author-date style of referencing because only the author’s surname and the year of publication are necessary to refer to in the body of the essay itself. The rest of the source information can be found in the reference list, at the end of your assignment.
Source material must be documented in the body of the assignment by citing the author(s), date(s) of the sources and where appropriate, the page number.
The underlying principle is that ideas and words of others must be formally acknowledged by inserting an in-text citation whenever you quote another work, or whenever you paraphrase another work in your own words.
The reader can obtain the full source information from the list of references that follows the body of your assignment.
You do not need to put the full title of the book or article into your essay paragraphs. All you need is the author’s surname, the year it was published, and the page number (where appropriate).
In-text citations have two formats
1. Parenthetical citation: Both the author and the date (and if applicable page number) appear in parentheses at the end of the sentence.
Ethics in the research context refers “to the standards of behaviour that guide your conduct in relation to the rights of the those who become subject of your work or are affected by it” (Saunders et al., 2019, pp. 252-253).
OR
2. Narrative citation: The author appears in the text and the date appears (and if applicable page number) in parentheses immediately after the author's name.
What are references?
References provide the information necessary for readers to identify and retrieve each work cited in your assignment.
Check each reference carefully against the original publication to ensure information is accurate and complete.
Consistency in reference formatting allows readers to identify the types of works you consulted and the important reference elements (author, date, title and source) with ease.
SIT uses the APA style of referencing. There are many rules that are part of APA that you need to follow when you prepare your reference list. This includes source information and the locations of italics, brackets, commas and full stops.
You will lose marks in your assignments if you do not follow the correct APA format.
References cited in the text of your assignment MUST appear in the reference list and vice versa.
Basic principles of reference list entries
A reference list entry generally has four elements: the author, date, title, and source. Each element answers a question:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of work: Second part of title. Source information.
Author: Names are inverted, surname comes first followed by initial/s. For two or more initials leave single spaces between initials. Always use ‘&’ between the last two names in a reference, not ‘and’.
Date: Copyright or publication year in brackets, followed by a full stop. Provide the most specific date possible, so if month and day are given, include them as well as the year e.g. (2018, September 16).
Title: Capitalise only the first letter of first word. For a two-part title also capitalise the first letter of the first word of the second part e.g. Small business management: Entrepreneurship and beyond. If a proper noun (person, country, company etc) is in the title the first letter is capitalised e.g. Two people, one land: The New Zealand wars. Most titles are also italicised, the exceptions are a journal article’s title or a chapter’s title in an edited book.
Source information: Publisher name, journal information, DOI or URL. Do not include Inc. or Ltd as part of a publisher’s name. Do not include a full stop at the end of DOIs or URLs. For articles, source information includes the journal’s title, volume and issue number, page range and DOI or URL (if article is freely available on the internet). Capitalise the first letter of all major words in a journal’s title and italicise along with the volume number but not the issue number e.g. Journal of Business Ethics, 150(3), 961-709. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3171-1
To become familiar with in-text citations and references check out the SIT APA 7th edition Referencing Guide and the SIT sample essay:
For more information on in-text citations and references check out the following sources:
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).
American Psychological Association. (2023, November). References. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references