Referencing Fundamentals: In-text citations

In-text citations are brief and appear in the body of your written work. It contains just enough information for a reader to then refer to the reference list in order to locate that exact resource. In-text citations for both APA7 & MP Harvard contain the same information, with some minor formatting differences:

Example:

Note that the only difference is that MP Harvard does not include a comma between the author and year.

There are times where in-text citations look a little different from the above example, for instance, when it's an editor, there's no author, there are many authors, or it's a group author. Use ERNI for guidance in creating in-text citations in these instances.

Signal words can sometimes help in figuring out how to incorporate the information of other authors. 

For examples, words that:

Try using a range of signal words and use them to give a clear idea of your purpose or point of view.

The University of NSW has an excellent webpage listing helpful words that may get you started along with detailed examples:

Transition Signals in Writing: 
https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/transition-signals-writing 

The placement of in-text citations are either:

1. at the end of the sentence or paragraph where you have drawn upon information derived from another source, or
2. directly after the author's name if you've incorporated the author into the narrative of your writing.

Examples:

1. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" (Orwell 1949, p. 1). ​
2. Orwell (1949, p. 1) draws the reader into his dystopian world from the very beginning, stating that "the clocks were striking thirteen".

These examples demonstrate what is often called an information-prominent citation, where the idea or topic is the focus (example 1), or an author-prominent citation, where the author is also part of the discussion as the name appears outside of the brackets (example 2).

The below example shows what in-text citations look like in a block of text. The citations are in purple text and follow the the MP Harvard referencing style: