An in-text citation is a short reference provided at the point in your write-up where you include information taken from a source. It points the reader to more complete information about the source in the reference list, which appears at the end of your paper.
What does it consist of?
An in-text citation generally consists of at least two elements (if available):
author information
this can be a person, multiple persons, or a group (an organization, institution, agency, etc.)
date information
If you are quoting (instead of paraphrasing or summarizing), you also need to include a third element:
information about a specific part of a source
How does an in-text citation look like?
In-text citations have two formats: parenthetical and narrative.
In parenthetical citations, the author name and publication date appear in parentheses at the end of the information
Falsely balanced news coverage can distort the public’s perception of expert consensus on an issue (Koehler, 2016).
One opinion is that Darwinian evolution "follows a rhythm dictated by the rapidity of generational turnover" (Smail,2008,p. 99).
In narrative citations, the author name is incorporated into the text as part of the sentence and the year follows in parentheses
Koehler(2016) noted the dangers of falsely balanced news coverage.
According to Smail(2008), Darwinian evolution "follows a rhythm dictated by the rapidity of generational turnover" (p. 99).
Overview video
Below is a great overview video about in-text citations from Western Sydney University:
