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APA Citation

Specific Part of a Source

What is a specific part of a source? 

A specific part of a source might be a page or page range, a chapter, a paragraph or paragraph range, a footnote, a video time stamp, table or figure, a heading or section, etc.. It is added as a third part of an in-text citation if you are quoting (APA does not require it if you paraphrase content).

Note that a specific part of a source is only used for in-text citations; it does not appear in reference list citations.

 

How do I write this information in my in-text citation?

  • The word page is abbreviated to p. and pages to pp.
    • (Meyers, 2023, p. 55)
    • (World Health Organization, 2022, pp. 98-101)
  • The word Chapter is written in full
    • (Qing & Liu, 2020, Chapter 8)
  • The word paragraph is abbreviated to para. and a paragraph range to paras.
    • (Patel, 2024, para. 5)
    • (Merida et. al, 2019, paras. 7-9)
  • A footnote is written in full
    • (Bellows, 2018, Footnote 3)
  • A time stamp in an audiovisual work is written in hour:minutes:seconds format
    •  (Wenders, 2003, 1:05:10)
  • A table or figure is written in full 
    • (Nguyen, 2020, Figure 4)
    • (Health Canada, 2024, Table 2)
  • A heading is written in regular script 
    • (Sloan, 2008, Summary and Conclusion section).
  • An abbreviated heading is put in quotation marks
    • (Handwerk, 2021, "300,000 Years Ago: Fossils").

For more information, see Citing Specific Parts of a Source and Direct Quotation of Material Without Page Numbers from the APA Style site.