In-Text Citation Checklist
The following is excerpted from the APA Style website. Open or download the APA Style In-Text Citation Checklist for your own use:
"Complete the following checklist for each sentence in your paper that relies on another source. Remember to cite all ideas, findings, results, or other information that is not your own and is not common knowledge. It may be helpful to highlight or annotate your paper to remind yourself of what information comes from another source and what is your contribution.
For each sentence that relies on another source...
□ Have you paraphrased as much as possible, rather than quoted?
□ If you directly quoted, is the quotation necessary? Could you paraphrase instead?
For each sentence that you paraphrased...
□ Did you avoid patchwriting?
□ Have you done more than omit a few words and substitute synonyms? To make a better paraphrase, reframe ideas and make them specific to your topic and argument.
□ Did you avoid overcitation? For long paraphrases, have you used one citation when introducing the idea and not repeated the citation unless there is a change of topic, source, or paragraph?
For each citation of a paraphrase...
□ Does your citation include the author and year?
□ For parenthetical citations, is there a comma between the author and year? (Author, year)
□ For narrative citations, is the date in parentheses after the author? Author (year)
For each sentence that contains a quotation...
□ Is the quotation incorporated into a sentence you wrote? Did you use appropriate punctuation (comma, colon, no punctuation) to introduce the quotation?
□ Do short quotations (<40 words) appear in double quotation marks?
□ Do long quotations (40+ words) appear in the block quotation format?
□ Is the block double-spaced?
□ Is the block indented 0.5" from the left margin?
□ Have you removed any quotation marks from around the block?
For each citation of a direct quotation...
□ Does your citation include the author, year, and page number (or alternative)?
□ For parenthetical citations, are there commas between the author and year and between the year and page number? Sentence "quotation" (Author, year, p. 20).
□ For narrative citations, does the page number appear in parentheses after the quotation? Author (year) "quotation" (p. 20).
For all in-text citations, in relation to the reference list...
□ Do spellings of author names in the text match spellings in the reference list?
□ Are author names abbreviated correctly from reference list entries (e.g., first author plus “et al.” for 3+ authors, abbreviations for group authors as appropriate)?
□ Do publication years in the text match the years in the reference list?
□ Does each in-text citation match only one reference list entry? If citations are ambiguous (could match more than one entry), follow the guidelines in the APA Manual.
For all reference list entries...
□ Have you followed reference examples?
□ Are all works in the reference list cited in the text? For any uncited works, either cite them in the text or remove the entries from the reference list."
