OL APA 7th Quiz 3: In-Text Citations

APA Quiz 3

This quiz relates to the correct format for in-text citations. The correct general in-text citation format is provided on page 253-278 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 7^th Edition as follows:

The basic form for citing an idea that is not your own is to reference the publication from which the idea was borrowed: “Author surname (year)” or “(Author surname, year)” as in:

“Smith (2019) examined the relationship between optimism and health …”

or

“A study examining the relationship between optimism and health (Smith, 2019) found ….”

Unlike a reference list DO NOT use the authors initials in the in-text citation.

When a publication that is being cited has one or two authors each author is cited on each occasion the citation occurs in the text. When a publication that is being cited has three or more authors, cite the first author only plus “et al.”  the first time and on all subsequent citations (“et al.” is not italicized and has a period following the “al”) and is followed by the year for example (Smith et al., 2020).

There are some exceptions that are unusual and are covered in the manual. Students are expected to know the exceptions for the Mastery Exams.

What is above is related to citing ideas, when you make a direct quotation - direct quotations are unusual in APA style - in addition to “Author surname (year)” or “(Author surname, year)” the page number needs to be added to the citation as in “Author surname (year, p. x)” or “(Author surname, year, pp. x-x)”. See APA Publication Manual 7^th Edition pp.270-173.

We have found that many students have learned to write papers by stringing together direct quotations.  Do not do this.  APA style reserves direct quotations for definitions and for particularly memorable turns of phrase.  Most papers should include no direct quotations.