To cite a reference in the text of your work, place the author's surname and the year of publication in parenthesis, e.g.(Smith, 2012). All in-text citations must have fully detailed, corresponding entries placed in a reference list at the end of your assignment.
The in-text citation can be placed in or at the end of a sentence, but always before the period. If the author's name is mentioned in the text you may omit it from the parenthesis which then only contains the year of publication and possibly a page number.
Some examples of in-text citations:
If a publication has 1-3 authors, all last names are included in the citation. The names are written in the same order as in the publication.
If a publication has four or more authors, name the first author of the publication followed by "et al.".
If there is no information about the author but the work is published by an organisation, the name of the organisation is indicated as author.
If there is a widely known abbreviation for an organisation, that abbreviation can be used. But it is good practice to use the full name in the first citation.
If there is no author for a work, you can use Anon. (short for anonymous) instead of a name.
Another possible way to cite a source without an author is to use its title in italics.
When using a direct quote, you should include the specific page number(s) where the quotation was found.
Multiple works by the same author or organisation are usually distinguished by the year of publication. (Smith, 2012) and (Smith, 2019) for example.
If you are citing multiple works by the same author published the same year you must add a letter to differentiate them. The first of the references becomes (Smith, 2012a) and the second (Smith, 2012b) and so forth. The same letters are also added to the reference list entries respectively.
In-text citations:
In the reference list:
Citing different authors sharing the same last name is generally not a problem. As long as the works cited are published in different years the reader will be able to differentiate them.
In the rare situation that you have to cite two works written by different authors, sharing the same last name and year of publication, you add their first name initial to the in-text citation to differentiate them.
In-text citations:
In the reference list:
If you want to reference multiple sources to support a single statement you may include all of them in one parenthesis. They should be separated with semicolons. The order is sometimes dictated by the importance or weight of the referenced works, but they can also be written in alphabetical or chronological order.
If you want to cite multiple sources with different perspectives you can not put them in the same parenthesis. It must be perfectly clear what information is taken from which source.
If the year of publication is unknown for the source you want to cite, you can use the copyright year instead with a "c" before it: c2007. If there is no copyright year either, write "n.d." (short for no date) in both the in-text citation and the reference list entry.
In-text citation:
In the reference list: