Whether you are quoting, paraphrasing (i.e. using your own words) or summarizing the work of others, you will need to cite them. Just remember, as long as you did not come up with the idea or information yourself, you will need to cite the work! The exception will be well-known facts such as "water boils at 100 degrees Celsius".
Each work that is used in your assignment or project must be cited in two places: the in-text citation and the reference list. The in-text citation appears within the main part of the document while the reference list is at the end of the document. This in-text citation allows the reader to locate the corresponding full citation in the reference list.
There are two parts to the in-text citation:
Name: Use the author's last name (also known as surname or family name).
Date: Indicate the year only.
Use either the narrative or parenthetical citation format, depending on how your sentence is phrased.
| Author | Narrative citation | Parenthetical citation |
| One author | Lee (2020) | (Lee, 2020) |
| Two authors | Betton and Woollard (2019) | (Betton & Woollard, 2019) |
| Three or more authors | Franc et al. (2020) | (Franc et al., 2020) |
Narrative citation: author's last name appears in your sentence and the date appears in parentheses (i.e. brackets) immediately after the name.
Author's last name (year of publication)
Lee (2020) argued that children with strong bilingual skills are more likely to...
According to focus group discussions by Betton and Woollard (2019)...
Parenthetical citation: both the author's last name and the date appear in parentheses.
(Author's last name, year of publication)
Children with strong bilingual skills are more likely to... (Lee, 2020)
From focus group discussions, it was found that... (Betton & Woollard, 2019).
When writing about another person’s ideas in your own words, use the author’s name and the year the book was written.
Narrative citation
Betton and Woollard (2019) found that some teens heavily curate their self-presentations online, which can lead to negative self-comparisons for those who are vulnerable.
Parenthetical citation
Some teens heavily curate their self-presentations online, which can lead to negative self-comparisons for those who are vulnerable (Betton & Woollard, 2019).
Provide the authors’ last name, the year the work was written, and the page number. Use the author’s exact words and quotation marks if there are fewer than 40 words. If there are more than 40 words in the quotation, indent the entire block of text and omit quotation marks.
Narrative citation
According to Betton and Woollard (2019), "teen online behaviours are largely unobservable and often a mystery to parents and practitioners" (p. 42).
Narrative citation (more than 40 words)
As argued by Betton and Woollard (2019), there are specific qualities that make social media different from physical online spaces:
These include the persistence of online content, the visibility and spreadability as well as the ability to search for and find content. Social media dynamics mean that when we post online our audiences can be invisible to us, the contexts we keep separate offline can more easily collide, and the public and private aspects of our lives can converge (p. 53).
Parenthetical citation (less than 40 words)
The online behaviour of teenagers are "largely unobservable and often a mystery to parents and practitioners" (Betton & Woollard, 2019, p. 42).
Parenthetical citation (more than 40 words)
There are specific qualities that make social media different from physical online spaces:
These include the persistence of online content, the visibility and spreadability as well as the ability to search for and find content. Social media dynamics mean that when we post online our audiences can be invisible to us, the contexts we keep separate offline can more easily collide, and the public and private aspects of our lives can converge. (Betton & Woollard, 2019, p. 53)
If the author is not known, use the title and the date as the in-text citation (for long titles just use the first few words).
Tea was popular originally because of its medicinal qualities ("A common guide to tea", 2019).
If the date is not known, use (n. d.) to indicate "no date".
Tea tree oil can be used for minor cuts and wounds due to its antiseptic properties (Brandt, n.d.).