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APSA parenthetical citations.

• Using the basic form
• Citing multiple authors and works
• Citing secondary sources
• Citing government documents (including court cases and statutes)

Using the basic form

According to the APSA rules, you must include parenthetical citations within your paper in order to indicate the source of a quotation or idea (if it is not your own).

Basic form

Insert the name of the author(s) and the year of publication in parentheses following the quote or idea.

If you are using a direct quote, a page number might be needed.

"the transmogrifying of mayoral power" (Bailey 1987, 85).

[NB: The parentheses come immediately after the quotation and before the final period that closes out the sentence; there is no comma between the author's name and the date; a comma separates the year from the page number; p. and pp. are not used.]

Citing an entire article or book

Omit the page numbers if you are referring to the entire article or book.

In the presidential election of 2004, the electoral college results varied little from those of 2000, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaign ads in battleground states (Azima 2005).

Author's name in sentence

If you use the author's name in your sentence, place only the date in parentheses.

Trish (1988) sharply disagrees.