APA In- Text Citations:

Whether you are paraphrasing ideas from a website, book, academic journal, newspaper, etc. you
are mainly concerned about the family name(s) of author(s) + year of publication of the
study. You should also remember to add reporting verbs conjugated in an academic tense (The
simple present, the simple past or the present perfect).
Check the following examples:
I. If the source is authored by 1 researcher named Ilsa Awwad and the year of publication
of the study in question is 2012, you can use in- text citations in the following ways:
a) Awwad (2012) insists/ insisted…..
b) Awwad concurs/ argued…. (2012).
c) ……………………………………… (Awwad, 2012).
d) According to Awwad (2012), ………………….

II. If 2 researchers (Ilsa Awwad and Mariebelle Harb) have authored the same work and
the year of publication of their work is 2015, you should add and or & depending on the
place of the citation in your sentence:
a) Awwad and Harb (2015) explain/ insisted that……. (Use and at the beginning of the
sentence).
b) ……….. (Awwad & Harb, 2015). (Use & at the end of the sentence).

III. If 3 or more researchers (Ilsa Awwad, May Khoury, Joy Harb and John Smith) have
authored the same work and the year of publication of their study is 2015, you should add
et al. to the citation:
a) Awwad et al. (2015) explain/ insisted that...
b) ……… (Awwad et al., 2015).
Notice how in (a), the verb conjugated in the present tense, is in the plural form because the
subject “Awwad et al.” refers to a group of researchers.

IV. If you want to paraphrase ideas from studies mentioning the same idea but conducted
in different years, or in other words, if the idea you want to paraphrase, appears in more
than one source, follow the example below:
Awwad (2012) focuses/ focused on …; Rifai (2018) suggests/ ed that…
a) Awwad (2012) and Rifai (2018) insist/ insisted….
V. If I want to cite a source mentioned by another source, what do I do?
 For example, if you are reading an article by Emile Khoury (2018) and in this article,
Khoury (2018) mentions another study by Awwad (2015) ... This is how you cite it:
Awwad (2015, as cited in Khoury, 2018) explains/ ed that……
OR
(Awwad, 2015, as cited in Khoury, 2018).

VI. If you have the author’s name, but the date of publication is unavailable, follow the
example below:
a) Awwad (n.d.) highlights/ highlighted that ….
b) …….. (Awwad, n.d.).

VII. If the source does not mention the author’s name, mention the title of the source,
followed by the year of publication. Notice the capitalization of the initials in the title and
the quotation marks in the first 2 examples:
 If you the year of publication is unavailable, use n.d.
a) “The Effects of Pollution” suggests/ ed ………. (2012).
b) “The Effects of Pollution” (2012) reports/ ed ..……….
c)…………. (The Effects of Pollution, 2012).

VIII. Using Direct Quotations:

When do I use direct quotations?
1) If I must share specific words or definitions that cannot be paraphrased.
2) If when paraphrased, the meaning of the sentence or word is altered.
3) If the word I am adding is the coined by the author.
4) If I don’t share the author’s opinion because I find it totally illogical or nonsensical and
don’t want to be associated with it in anyway.
For example:
Tawil (2018) insists/ insisted that “Capitalize the initial of the first word only”.
Tawil (2018)/ the author/ he insists/ed that “Capitalize the initial of the first word only”.
If you don’t want to copy the whole sentence within quotation marks, use an ellipsis:
Tawil (2018) insists that “Capitalize the first … word only”.

IX. If you are using a webpage of an organization, put the name of the organization
followed by the year of publication:
More than 300 million people worldwide are affected by depression (World Health Organization,
2018).
OR
According to the World Health Organization (2018), more than 300 million people worldwide
are affected by depression.