– How do I quote in APA Format in my essay?

For citations in APA format, you have to indicate the author, date, and page number of the quotation. There are two ways you can do this. First, you can introduce the quote with a signal phrase that includes the author’s last name followed by the year of publication in parentheses. After the quote, give the page number preceded by “p.” all in parentheses. The parenthetical reference to the page number should come after the closing quotation mark, and the period should come after the closing parenthesis. For example:

Jordan (2013) says, “[b]ased on the collected responses, a confirmed date and time were set” (p. 1).

Second, if you don’t include the author’s last name and date of publication in the introductory phrase, you will need to place that information in the parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. This will usually happen if you have already introduced the source in a preceding sentence.

The author writes that “[b]ased on the collected responses, a confirmed date and time were set” (Jones, 2013, p. 1).

If you have a quote that is more than four lines, you should use a block quote (see the separate FAQ on this topic). In that case, you will still want to introduce the quote with some type of signal phrase and then start the quote on a new line. The whole quote should be indented by one half-inch. You do not need to use quotation marks, but do include the parenthetical citation after the period of the last sentence in the quotation. As with shorter quotes, if you do not include the author’s last name and the date of publication in the introductory phrase, you will need to do so in the parenthetical citation.

If you would like more information on APA style formatting, visit this helpful website.

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