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In academic environments, citing means, quite simply, pointing and giving credit to a source from which you have borrowed information. APA manuscripts feature two kinds of citing: (1) reference citations and (2) in-text citations. The two kinds of citations together make up a system that helps the reader understand which borrowed words or ideas in your paper came from which research source.

Reference citations (or “references”) are the full citations that appear at the end of your paper. Each reference citation refers to a single research source, such as a book or journal article, and includes the following information: the author (or creator), the publication date, the title, and the location (that is, the book, journal, video, website, etc.) where the information you borrowed can be found. Your list of references is arranged in alphabetical order according to the last names of the primary authors.

In-text citations, on the other hand, are embedded – as the name suggests – directly into the text that makes up the body of your paper. An in-text citation is short. It includes two pieces of information: the last name(s) of the primary author(s) and a publication date. This short notation is a marker, and it always points to a single, specific one of the longer reference citations at the end of your paper. The in-text citation and the reference are a matched pair, indicating exactly which of your research sources provided the words or ideas that come immediately before the marker in the text of your paper.