Ask OASISUsing & Crediting Sources: How We Cite
Last updated 5/6/2020
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Audio: Guitar music
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Parenthetical: The authors of the source are included within parentheses.
- Paraphrase of an idea goes here (Author, Year).
Narrative: The authors of the source are included as a grammatical part of the sentence.
- Author (Year) reported that “quotation here” (p. xx).
Audio: In APA we either use narrative or parenthetical citations, and you can see examples of each here. Both formats include the name of the author and the year, and citations for both paraphrases and quotations look very similar. The only difference is that for a direct quotation, we add quotation marks and the page or paragraph number. Most of the time we include the page number, but with so many more resources being available online without specific pages, there's also the option to use the paragraph number.
The main difference between narrative and parenthetical citations is that with a narrative citation, the author’s name is part of the grammar of the sentence. So, with a narrative citation, you're going to mention the author or authors within the text of the sentence itself.
The other option is to use a parenthetical citation. Notice the word parenthetical, like parentheses, so all of the information is within parentheses after the idea that it refers to. You’ll use a parenthetical citation when you don't actually mention the author within the text of the sentence.
The final note for parenthetical and narrative citations is that both types of citations are equally accepted in APA—APA doesn’t have a preference for one over the other. However, it is useful to keep in mind that narrative citations tend to emphasize authors over ideas and can become a little repetitive if used too often. So, when choosing which type of citation to use in your writing, keep that in mind, and generally, a balance between the two types of citations can be helpful.
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