An in-text citation is required if you paraphrase (use someone else's ideas in your own words), summarise (use a brief account of someone else's ideas), quote (use someone else's exact words) or copy (use someone else's figures, tables or structure). When citing references within the text of an assignment, you need the author’s surname/family name or organisation name plus the year of publication and potentially a page number:
(Oliver, 2003) (Cruttenden, 2014, p. 89)
"As Cottrell (2011) suggests, it is important to appreciate the difficulties that students can sometimes face when trying to order their thoughts in a more reasoned and logical way. Consequently, critical thinking is a skill which may have to be developed over a long period of time, and which will require a great deal of practice to fully grasp (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2013)."
N.B – notice how you can use in-text citations in different ways depending on whether you want the emphasis on the author (the first in-text citation above) or whether you want the emphasis on the idea (the second in-text citation).
If the author is not referred to as part of the sentence, put the citation and page number in brackets:
"Critical thinking is argued to be the skill “to make careful judgements about information and to evaluate its quality" (Drew and Bingham, 2001, p. 282)."
N.B – notice that with a direct quotation you need to use double quotation marks and, where possible, you must include the page number so that your quotation can be verified.
If the source you are referring to has no date, for example, on a website, use n.d. instead:
(Lancaster University, n.d.)
If there is an instance in which an author published different texts in your reference list, use letters to denote the difference so that the reader can differentiate in the reference list.
(Smith, 2008a) (Smith, 2008b)
| Number of authors | Notes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Two authors | Use both author surnames in all in-text citations |
(Pears & Shields, 2010) Pears and Shields (2010) |
| Three or more authors | Use only the first author surname and then 'et al'. in all in-text citatons |
(Martin et al., 2020) Martin et al. (2020) |
There may be times when you have to cite two publications by an author published in the same year. To do this, you need to distinguish between the items in the text and the reference list by allocating letters.
Example:
"The results of the survey showed that the standard of living was higher in the coastal regions (Williams, 2004a). Further research revealed that employment figures were also higher (Williams, 2004b)."
In your reference list, the publications would be shown as:
Williams, A. (2004a). Survey of living standards in the coastal regions. London: Survey Press.
Williams, A. (2004b). Employment figures for the coastal regions. London: Survey Press.
If possible, try to avoid citing works where the author is not obvious. However if you do need to cite a work which appears to have no author, use the following guidance:
Journal article, website or newspaper article with no author:
Use the first few words of the article title in double quotation marks, with "headline-style" capitalisation
Example:
("Barcelona to Ban Burqa," 2010)
Works with an anonymous author:
If the work you are referring to is designated as anonymous, the in-text citation should use the word Anonymous, followed by a comma and the date.
Example:
(Anonymous, 2019)
If the source you are referring to has no date, for example, on a website, use n.d. instead.
Example:
(Lancaster University, n.d.)
To cite a website or web page within the text of an assignment, cite by the author if there is one clearly stated. If there is no author you should cite by the website name or organisation name.
Example:
(World Health Organization, 2018)
This is when you are citing the work of an author which is mentioned in a book or journal article by another author. You should always try to read the original work where possible, but if not, you must make it clear that you have not read the original work by using the phrase ‘cited in’ and then include the reference for the source from which the information is taken.
Within the text you would present this as follows:
"There have been many in-depth comparisons (Kazmer and Xie, 2008 as cited in Robson, 2011)…"
In the reference list, you would provide the full reference for Robson’s (2011) work, not Kazmer and Xie’s (2008) work.