There are small variations in how citations can appear in your text, depending on how many authors there are in the source.
Type of citation |
First citation in text (author prominent format) |
Subsequent citations in text (author prominent format) |
First citation in text (information prominent format, in brackets at end of sentence) |
Subsequent citations in text (information prominent format, in brackets at end of sentence) |
| One work by one author | Whelan (2020) | Whelan (2020) | (Whelan, 2020) | (Whelan, 2020) |
| One work by two authors | Whelan and Collins (2020) | Whelan and Collins (2020) | (Whelan & Collins, 2020) | (Whelan & Collins, 2020) |
| One work by three or more authors | Whelan et al. (2019) | Whelan et al. (2019) | (Whelan et al., 2019) | (Whelan et al., 2019) |
| Organisation (readily identified through abbreviation) as authors | Health Service Executive (HSE, 2021) | HSE (2021) | (Health Service Executive [HSE], 2021) | (HSE, 2021) |
| Organisation (no abbreviation) | Bristol-Myers Squibb (2020) | Bristol-Myers Squibb (2020) | (Bristol-Myers Squibb, 2020) | (Bristol-Myers Squibb, 2020) |
These are distinguished by adding lower case letters (a,b,c, etc.) after the year and within the brackets.
Each citation should have a matching reference in the reference list. Organize them in the Reference list alphabetically by the title of the article or book (ignoring "a" or "the"). Lower case letters (a, b, c) are added immediately after the year. Refer to these sources in your assignment as they appear in your Reference List.
If there is no named author, use the name of the organisation.
If the organisation is known by abbreviations, always give the name in full the first time their work is cited. The abbreviations can be used in subsequent citations.
If the author's name is unknown, you should give the title of the source.
If you're citing an entire work, like a book, website, video, report etc., italicize the shortened title in your in-text citation.
If you're citing something which is part of a bigger work, like an article from a magazine, newspaper, journal, chapter or short story from a book, put the shortened title in double quotation marks in your in-text citation. Use the first 2 or 3 words of this title only.
If you need to refer to two or more sources by the same author in different years, there is no need to keep repeating the author's surname in the citation.
Include the surname and the oldest year first, then separate the other years by semicolons (;). The sources should be ordered by year of publication, with the oldest first.
You must include all of the sources separately in your reference list or bibliography.
If the first authors of multiple references share the same surname but have different initials, include the first authors’ initials in all in-text citations, even if the year of publication differs. Initials help avoid confusion within the text and help readers locate the correct entry in the reference list.
If multiple authors within a single reference share the same surname, the initials are not needed in the in-text citation; cite the work in the standard author–date format.
