PLUG-INs A Student’s Guide to Information Literacy
IN-TEXT CITATIONS for Direct Quotes
APA Style
What is an in-text citation?
What is a direct quote?
What is APA
style ?
Why are honeybees in this
presentation?
Why not, they’re cute.
And, they make delicious honey.
Anyway, APA means American
Psychological Association, a professional
organization.
It identifies the source of information in the body of your
writing.
What is an in-text
citation?
A direct quote or quotation is when you use the exact words from a book or other source in your own
writing.
You must use quotation marks
around these words to show that you
did not write them.If you do not, it is plagiarism or
stealing the words.
Remember, plagiarism is
cheating. Students get in big trouble for
cheating at HCT.
Fortunately, it is easy to format direct
quotations. Let’s see how.
After the quotation marks, you must show
where the words came from.
Do it like this : (Author, year,
page)You put it in the body of your writing, not at the bottom of a page
or at the end.
Blah blah blah “di di di tran tran
tran.”
Open parenthesi
s mark
Letter “p” lower case. Dot. Page number
Author’s last name only. Comma. Space.
Closed parenthesis
mark
Year. Comma.Space.
(Author, year, p. #)
The complete citation (author name, year,
title, city, publisher & pages) must be in the
Bibliography or Reference List at the end of your paper.
If the author’s name appears as part of your text, write the year in
parentheses after the name. After the quote, write the
page number in parentheses.
For example : Smith (2004) has said that
“by 2010 Dubai will be the most interesting city in the world (p.
23).
Here is a different situation.
But, the author’s name, year, and
page number must appear in
parentheses.
Words words words words words words words words words words words wordsWords words words words words wordsWords words words words words wordsWords words words words words wordsWords words words words words wordsWords words words words words wordsWords words words (Smith, 2004, p. 23).
What about very long quotations,
more than 40 words?
You must tab over and create a block.
No quotation marks are needed around this block.
What if you don’t need all the words and want to omit some words in
a quotation?
Use . . . for the words you omitted. This is called an
ellipsis. “words . . . words”
What if the grammar does not make sense when you
add the quote? Or, you need to add a
word?
Use square brackets to show
that the word you added was not in
the original.
“She [Lady
MacBeth] suffered from
guilt.”
What if the source is a website?
Again, write the author’s last
name and year.
But, if there is no author, write the first 3 words of
the title of the webpage in italics and the year.
For different examples, look in a book like
this.
It is on the library shelf at BF 76.7 .P47
2007
Or, enter “APA” in a title or keyword search of the
library catalogue to find similar books.
I hope this helps you understand how to write APA in-text citations for
direct quotes.
Ask your teacher or your friendly librarian
if you have any questions.
HAPPY WRITING !
Thank you for listening !