What is a parenthetical reference?
A parenthetical reference is a reference within the body of your paper to one of the sources in your reference list. It indicates to your reader exactly what you derived from the source, and specifically where they can find it. You need to write a parenthetical, or “in-text” reference, whether you quote the material directly from the source, paraphrase it in your own words, or refer to an idea derived from the material. What typically goes in an APA-style parenthetical reference? The information that you need to include depends on what type of source the material comes from. For printed material, you normally only need to include the author(s) (or article title if there is no author) and year of publication (never the month or day) in your reference. When citing a specific part of a source (for example, a direct quotation), you will also want to indicate the page number(s) or other designation (chapter, figure, table, equation, etc.). For Internet sources, paragraph numbers can be used
