Westchester Community College Harold L. Drimmer Library

APA 7th Edition: Narrative vs Parenthetical Citations

Narrative vs Parenthetical Citations

Direct Quotes and Indirect Quotes (Paraphrase) may use either a Parenthetical Citation (all of the citation is within parenthesis) or a Narrative Citation - where you introduce your author(s) to the reader in the text of your paper. Narrative citations always include the year in parenthesis after the author(s) names. 

Parenthetical:

“Even smart, educated, emotionally stable adults believe superstitions that they recognize are not rational,” as exemplified by the existence of people who knock on wood for good luck (Risen, 2016, p. 202).

Narrative:

As Risen (2016) notes “even smart, educated, emotionally stable adults believe superstitions that they recognize are not rational,” as exemplified by the existence of people who knock on wood for good luck (p. 202).

Section 8.1 of the APA Publication Manual notes that using narrative citation and signal phrases can help writers avoid "over and under citation" (p. 254).

See Appropriate Level of Citation on the APA Style Guide for additional information: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/appropriate-citation

In the example below, the signal phrases Their study and The authors refer back to Bernecker and Kramer (2020) so there is no need to add citations to those sentences, although page numbers would be required if including direct quotes.

Bernecker and Kramer (2020) found that when students believed they had a limited amount of willpower, they were less likely to exercise during the stressful time of final exams than students who believed they had a non-limited amount of willpower. Their study explained that students who were designated as falling under the limited willpower theory felt they had a finite amount of energy to deal with the demands of life such as exercising and studying. The authors interviewed 278 students about their exercise habits both during and outside of the final exam period and questioned them on their ideas on willpower. 

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