The three kinds of in-text citation
| Kind | Styles | Example from this tool |
|---|---|---|
| Author-date in parentheses | APA, Harvard, Chicago author-date | (Grady et al., 2019); (Ashbourn, 2014); (Kwon 2022) |
| Author and page | MLA | (Gleick); add the page: (Gleick 45) |
| Footnote | Chicago notes and bibliography | Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown (Pantheon Books, 2020). |
| Number | IEEE, AMA | [1] in IEEE; a superscript 1 in AMA |
The generator picks the right form from the style you select. Switch the style and every in-text citation in your list changes with it.
APA in-text citations
APA 7 uses the author's surname and the year: (Sapolsky, 2017). With two authors, join them with an ampersand inside parentheses; with three or more, give the first author and "et al." from the first citation on, as in (Grady et al., 2019). For a direct quotation, add the page: (Sapolsky, 2017, p. 32). In a narrative citation the name moves into the sentence: Sapolsky (2017) argues that...
When a group is the author, the group name takes the author slot, for example (National Cancer Institute, 2019). The APA citation generator shows more APA examples.
MLA and Harvard in-text citations
MLA 9 uses the author and the page with no comma and no year: (Crowley and Hawhee 112). The generator gives you the author part; add the page number you are citing. If a source has no page numbers, MLA allows the author alone.
Harvard in the Cite Them Right version looks like APA at first sight, (Ashbourn, 2014), but differs in the reference list, for example "2nd edn." and "Available at:" for web sources. See the Harvard referencing generator.
Numbered styles and footnotes
In IEEE and AMA the citation is a number that points to the numbered reference list, assigned in the order sources are first cited in your text. Before you copy a numbered list, check that the numbers follow the order in which the sources first appear in your text, and renumber in your word processor if needed. The IEEE citation generator and the AMA citation generator explain the details.
Chicago notes and bibliography uses a full footnote the first time you cite a source. The generator shows that footnote under the preview; later citations of the same source can use a shortened note with the surname, a short title and the page.
Common in-text citation mistakes
- An in-text citation with no matching entry in the reference list, or the other way round.
- A different spelling of the author or a different year in the text and in the list.
- Missing page numbers for direct quotations.
- Using "et al." in a style or with a number of authors where it is not allowed.
- Forgetting the citation after a paraphrase, because the words are now your own.
Generating the in-text form and the reference from the same entry avoids the first two problems. The last one is about habits: if you used the paraphrasing tool on a source, the citation still belongs in the sentence.