In-Text Citations Explained: APA and MLA Parenthetical Rules

In-text citations are the short references you place inside your sentences to point readers to the full entry on your reference page. They are the part of citation that students get wrong most often, usually by forgetting them entirely or by formatting them inconsistently. The good news is that the rules are short and easy to memorise.

APA: author and date

APA uses the author’s surname and the year of publication. You can place both in parentheses, or weave the author into the sentence and put only the year in parentheses.

For a direct quotation, add the page number: (Garcia, 2020, p. 15). For two authors, join their names with an ampersand inside parentheses: (Garcia & Lee, 2020). For three or more authors, name the first author followed by et al.: (Garcia et al., 2020).

MLA: author and page

MLA uses the author’s surname and the page number, with no comma between them and no date.

For two authors, use both surnames joined by and: (Hughes and Clarke 12). For three or more, use the first author followed by et al.: (Hughes et al. 12).

When there is no author

If a source has no named author, use a shortened version of the title instead. In APA this goes in quotation marks for short works or italics for longer ones, with the year. In MLA, use the shortened title and the page number. We cover this in detail in our guide on citing sources with no author or date.

Every in-text citation must match an entry on your reference page, and every reference entry must be cited at least once in the text. Keeping the two in sync is the single most important habit for clean, honest academic writing.