Citations in APA style include two parts: (1) in-text citations, which are connected to (2) reference list citations.
This guide will help you create in-text citations that correlate with the corresponding reference list citations. Please see Reference Examples for more details on the reference list.
Note: All sources that are cited in the text must appear in the reference list at the end of the paper except for Personal Communications and similar unrecoverable sources.
If you are citing a source that has multiple authors, follow these basic steps.
Always cite both authors' names in-text every time you reference them.
Johnson and Smith (2009) found...
If a document has three or more authors, simply provide the last name of the first author with "et al." from the first citation to the last.
Thomas et al. (2007) likened abnormal psychology to...
... distractions (Thomas et al., 2007).