How to cite using APA in the Health Sciences

Parenthetical citations are one of two types of in-text citations in APA. In parenthetical citations, both the author and date appear in parentheses, separated by a comma. For two authors, use the ampersand (&). For more than two authors, use only the first author's surname as it appears on the publication and add 'et al.' (Latin for "and others"). Parenthetical citations can appear within or at the end of a sentence, and punctuation is always placed after the parentheses. When using a direct quotation, parenthetical citations always appear outside of the quotation marks.

Examples

Paraphrasing

APA style citations are the accepted form of citation in nursing and psychology (Flynn, 2024), while AMA style citations are often seen in other areas of health science literature (Rose, 2021).

Direct Quotation

"APA style is among the most common author-date citation systems" (Tsu & Spence, 2018).

Block Quotation

Ultimately, the individual does not exercise much authority in their choice of citation style:

Some authors prefer to focus on communicating ideas in their work rather than on formatting their references, which makes APA style citations more appealing to them. However, also important to consider is that some readers prefer a numbered-style citation over an author-date citation system, because it limits the amount of in-text reference information, leading to less distractions and a smoother reading experience. Despite personal preference and other considering factors in citation styles, the most important determinant of citation style is the field of writing that the author finds themselves in. Most fields will be dominated by a citation style used by the publishers of current literature, and this chosen standard will trickle down through the academic world by instructors who teach in that field. (Miretti et al., 2020).

Don't leave it blank! Find out how to properly indicate that information is missing from one of your reference elements by reading more about missing information.

Information on this page was adapted from "Chapter 8: Works Credited in the Text", in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), as well as the APA webpage, "In-Text Citations".