Environmental Science Guide

In-text citations occur within the body of your paper. This is a shortened reference to the source that goes directly in the sentence and only includes the author's last name and date of the publication. An in-text citation can be introduced in two ways, parenthetical or narrative. A narrative citation is when the author(s) name and publication date appears in the sentence whereas a parenthetical citation is one where the author(s) name and year of publication appears at the end of the sentence with parenthesis. Here are examples of both ways:

Parenthetical example: 

• “Smith (2015), argues that diminishing fox habitats have greatly impacted birth rates…”   

Narrative example: 

• Birth rates have been on a steady decline and may be correlated to diminishing fox habitats (Smith 2015). 

Also, view this article sample taken from the Journal of Ecology.

Here are some examples of what to do when you have more than one author or multiple works

• One author: no comma between author and date of publication 
  • Example: (Bendix 2000).

• Two authors: Include both authors last names and date of publication
  • Example: (Levine and D'Antonio 1999). 

• Three or more authors: Include ONLY the first author with "et al." followed by date of publication
  • Example: (Torres et al. 2014).

• Citations of multiple works: separate citations by a comma 
  • Example: (Dickinson et al. 2010, Poisson et al. 2020).

No page references are included in internal citations.