7th Edition
In-Text Citation Checklist
Complete the following checklist for each sentence in your paper that relies on another
source. Remember to cite all ideas, findings, results, or other information that is not your
own and is not common knowledge. It may be helpful to highlight or annotate your paper
to remind yourself of what information comes from another source and what is your
contribution.
For each sentence that relies on another source ...
Have you paraphrased as much as possible, rather than quoted?
If you directly quoted, is the quotation necessary? Could you paraphrase instead?
For each sentence that you paraphrased ...
Did you avoid patchwriting? Have you done more than omit a few words and substitute
synonyms? To make a better paraphrase, reframe ideas and make them specific to your
topic and argument.
Did you avoid overcitation? For long paraphrases, have you used one citation when
introducing the idea and not repeated the citation unless there is a change of topic,
source, or paragraph?
For each citation of a paraphrase ...
Does your citation include the author and year?
For parenthetical citations, is there a comma between the author and year? (Author, year)
For narrative
citations, is the date in parentheses after
the author? Author (year)
For each sentence that contains a quotation ...
Is the quotation incorporated into a sentence you wrote? Did you use appropriate
punctuation (comma, colon, no punctuation) to introduce the quotation?
Do short quotations (<40 words) appear in double quotation marks?
Do long quotations (40+ words) appear in the block quotation format?
Is the block double-spaced?
Is the block indented 0.5" from the left margin?
Have you removed any quotation marks from around the
block?
For each citation of a direct quotation ...
Does your citation include
the
author, year, and page number (or alternative)?
For parenthetical citations,
are there commas between
the author and year and
between the year and page number? Sentence "quotation" (Author, year, p. 20).
For narrative citations, does
the
page number appear
in
parentheses after the
quotation? Author (year)
"quotation" (p. 20).
For all in-text citations, in relation to the reference list ...
Do
spellings of author names
in
the text match spellings in the reference list?
Are author names abbreviated
correctly from reference
list entries (e.g., first
author
plus “et al.” for 3+
authors, abbreviations for group authors as appropriate)?
Do publication years in the
text match the years in the
reference list?
Does each in-text citation match only one reference
list entry? If citations are
ambiguous (could match more
than one entry), follow the
guidelines in
Publication
Manual Sections 8.18 to 8.20.
For all reference list entries ...
Have you followed the reference examples in Chapter 10?
Are all works in the reference list cited in the text? For any uncited works,
either cite them in the text or remove the entries from the reference list.
More information on in-text citation can be found in Chapter 8 of
both the Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association (7th ed.) and the Concise Guide to APA Style (7th
ed.). Reference examples appear in Chapter 10.
SOURCE: American Psychological Association. (2020).
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association
(7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000