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The American Psychological Association's APA website has comprehensive styles guidelines by topic and an informative blog: https://apastyle.apa.org/
You can also consult the print edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association available via Library Search.
CDU APA 7th is an author-date style. This means your in-text citations need these two elements to be correct. There are two types of in-text citations, narrative citations and parenthetical citations.
Narrative Citations are a part of the sentence they are in.
If the citation is removed and the sentence no longer makes sense, you are using a narrative citation.
Parenthetical Citations are placed at the end of the information you are citing, in parentheses.
If the citation is removed and the sentence still makes sense, you are using a parenthetical citation.
An in-text citation can look different depending on the author. Have a look at the table below for in-text citation layouts.
| Author type | Narrative Citation: First citation | Narrative Citation: Subsequent citations | Parenthetical Citation: First citation | Parenthetical Citation: Subsequent citations |
| One work by one author | Walker (2017) | Walker (2017) | (Walker, 2017) | (Walker, 2017) |
| One work by two authors | Walker and Allen (2014) | Walker and Allen (2014) | (Walker & Allen, 2014) | (Walker & Allen, 2014) |
| One work by 3-20 authors | Bradley et al. (2015) | Bradley et al. (2015) | (Bradley et al., 2015) | (Bradley et al., 2015) |
| One work by 21+ authors | Ahamad et al. (2015) | Ahamad et al. (2015) | (Ahamad et al., 2015) | (Ahamad et al., 2015) |
| Groups/Organisations (readily identified through abbreviation) as author | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW, 2018) | AIHW (2018) | (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2018) | (AIHW, 2018) |
| Groups/Organisations (no abbreviation) as author | Diabetes Australia (2017) | Diabetes Australia (2017) | (Diabetes Australia, 2017) | (Diabetes Australia, 2017) |
| Multiple sources in the same sentence, ie. one sentence used ideas from several resources and needs to cite them in the same sentence |
Diabetes Australia (2017), Parnell (2018) and Kerridge et al. (2013) discuss… Can be in any order when narrative style |
Parnell (2018), Kerridge et al. (2013) and Diabetes Australia (2017) discuss… |
(Diabetes Australia, 2017; Kerridge et al., 2013; Parnell, 2018)
Must be alphabetical |
(Diabetes Australia, 2017; Kerridge et al., 2013; Parnell, 2018) |
