In-text citations typically have two formats: parenthetical and narrative. In parenthetical citations, the author's name and the page number (MLA) or publication date (APA) appear in parentheses. When a parenthetical citation is at the end of a sentence, place the period or other end punctuation after the closing parentheses.
EXAMPLE: Parenthetical citation in MLA Style
Jane Eyre is a "feminist Künstlerroman" that narrativizes a woman's struggle to write herself into being (Smith 86).
EXAMPLE: Parenthetical citation in APA Style
In the production process nowadays, skilled labor and computerized machines are used (Rode, 2012).
In narrative citations, the name is incorporated into the text as part of the sentence for MLA, and together with the publication date in APA. In the latter, the author appears in running text and the date appears in parentheses immediately after the author's name:
EXAMPLE: Narrative citation in MLA style
Smith argues that Jane Eyre is a "feminist Künstlerroman" that narrativizes a woman's struggle to write herself into being (86).
EXAMPLE: Narrative citation (with parenthesis) in APA style
Rode (2012) claims that productive activities have been part of human civilization since ancient times.
If you cite multiple works parenthetically, place the citations in parentheses, separating them with semicolons:
EXAMPLE: Multiple parenthetical citations in MLA style
(Smith 25; Jones 76).
EXAMPLE: Multiple parenthetical citations in APA style
(Adams et al., 2019; Shumway & Shulman, 2015; Westinghouse, 2017).
