An in-text citation is the short tag in your sentence that points to a full entry in your reference list. This guide shows the patterns nursing students meet most, with fictional examples built around clinical topics.
APA 7 gives you two ways to build a citation, and good papers mix them. In a parenthetical citation, the author and year sit in parentheses at the end of the idea. In a narrative citation, the author's name is part of your sentence and only the year goes in parentheses.
Use a narrative citation when the author or study is the focus ("Okafor (2021) compared..."). Use a parenthetical citation when the finding matters more than who reported it. The period goes after the closing parenthesis. This page is the in-text companion to the full APA 7 guide.
About the examples. Authors, years and findings on this page are fictional and illustrative. Always take the details from your own sources and follow your program's style requirements.
| Authors | Parenthetical | Narrative |
|---|---|---|
| One | (Okafor, 2021) | Okafor (2021) |
| Two | (Nguyen & Okafor, 2022) | Nguyen and Okafor (2022) |
| Three or more | (Lindqvist et al., 2020) | Lindqvist et al. (2020) |
For three or more authors, use "et al." from the very first citation. In the reference list you still name every author, up to 20. Use "&" inside parentheses and "and" in running text.
If two different sources would shorten to the same form, such as Lindqvist et al. (2020) for two papers with different author teams, add as many surnames as it takes to tell them apart, then "et al."
Health sources often come from organisations rather than people. Spell out the full name the first time, add the abbreviation in square brackets in a parenthetical citation (or in parentheses in a narrative one), and use the abbreviation afterwards. Only abbreviate when the abbreviation is well known or you will use the name repeatedly.
If an organisation has no widely known abbreviation, write the full name each time. Match the name exactly to the author element in your reference entry.
The ProNursingWriters team can check and format your in-text citations and references to APA 7.
| Problem | What to do | Example |
|---|---|---|
| No author | Move the title into the author position. Use double quotation marks for articles, chapters and web pages; italics for books, reports and brochures. Shorten long titles. | ("Preventing falls in acute care," 2023) (Safe medication practice handbook, 2020) |
| No date | Write "n.d." (no date) in place of the year. | (Okafor, n.d.) |
| Personal communication | For interviews or emails you cannot retrieve. Cited in text only, not in the reference list. | (C. A. Okafor, personal communication, March 3, 2025) |
A clinical preceptor you interviewed is a personal communication; ask whether your program permits it before relying on one.
A secondary source is one you read that describes someone else's work. Cite the original only if you read the original. If you did not, name the original work in the text, then add "as cited in" and the source you actually read. Only the source you read goes in your reference list.
Here Okafor (2021) is in the reference list; Lindqvist (2018) is not. Use this sparingly. In most nursing papers it is better to find the original.
Prefer paraphrase in nursing writing. When you do quote, put the exact words in double quotation marks and add the page number. Use "p." for one page and "pp." for a range. A quotation of 40 words or more becomes a block quote: start it on a new line, indent it 0.5 inch, drop the quotation marks, and put the citation after the final punctuation.
If the source has no page numbers, such as a web page, count paragraphs ("para. 4") or give the section heading with the paragraph, for example (Regional Nursing Safety Council [RNSC], 2023, Prevention section, para. 2). Page numbers are also encouraged, but not required, for paraphrases of long works such as a textbook or guideline.
Follow your institution's academic-integrity policy, and read how to avoid plagiarism for a longer walkthrough. The Purdue OWL also has free APA examples.
APA 7 allows you to leave the year off later narrative mentions within the same paragraph, as long as it is clear which source you mean. Parenthetical citations always keep the year. Many instructors prefer the year every time, so check.
At the end of the idea it supports, before the period. For a quotation, the closing quotation mark comes first, then the citation, then the period.
No. Cite the journal article itself. The database never appears in the in-text citation or, for journal articles, in the reference.
Use the group author and year, for example (RNSC, 2022). See the guideline citation guide.