Should I Use Narrative or Parenthetical Citation?
One complexity of APA citation formatting is that besides including all of the correct components in a citation, writers also need to choose whether to use narrative or parenthetical citation for each sentence that contains source material.
Maybe you have all of your research ready and know exactly how to cite authors and how often to cite authors, but you’re wondering about the difference between narrative citation, which is citation within the grammatical structure of the sentence, and parenthetical citation, which is citation within parentheses usually found at the end of a sentence. Is one type of citation better than the other? Are there rules for when to use each type of citation? If you’ve ever found yourself wondering any of these questions, you’ve come to the right place for answers!
Narrative citation appears within the grammatical structure of the sentence. Put simply, narrative citation occurs when you use the author’s name within the sentence.
A narrative citation with paraphrased material might look like this:
Narrative citation with quoted material might look like this:
In contrast, parenthetical citation includes the author’s name in parentheses rather than within the sentence.
A parenthetical citation with paraphrased material follows:
Maybe you have all of your research ready and know exactly how to cite authors and how often to cite authors, but you’re wondering about the difference between narrative citation, which is citation within the grammatical structure of the sentence, and parenthetical citation, which is citation within parentheses usually found at the end of a sentence. Is one type of citation better than the other? Are there rules for when to use each type of citation? If you’ve ever found yourself wondering any of these questions, you’ve come to the right place for answers!
Narrative citation appears within the grammatical structure of the sentence. Put simply, narrative citation occurs when you use the author’s name within the sentence.
A narrative citation with paraphrased material might look like this:
- Doe (2018) studied the swimming habits of marine animals in tide pools.
Narrative citation with quoted material might look like this:
- Doe (2018) argued that “many of the creatures in tide pools love to swim” (p. 280).
In contrast, parenthetical citation includes the author’s name in parentheses rather than within the sentence.
A parenthetical citation with paraphrased material follows:
- The marine animals that inhabit tide pools enjoy swimming (Doe, 2018).
Parenthetical citation with quoted material would look like this:
- In contrast to the inhabitants of larger bodies of water, “many of the creatures in tide pools love to swim” (Doe, 2018, p. 280).
Basically, the difference between narrative and parenthetical citation stems from citation placement within the sentence. One important rule to remember is that you won’t mix these two methods into one sentence; in other words, you might use either narrative citation or parenthetical citation in a given sentence, but you won’t use both in one sentence. With that explained, you might be wondering why a writer might use one over the other and whether one type of citation is preferred in APA style.
A writer might choose between narrative or parenthetical citation for several reasons:
1.) If the writer wants to highlight the author—for example, if the writer is making an argument about the author or highlighting what different authors argued about the same topic—the writer might choose to use narrative citation.
2.) If the writer wants to highlight the information rather than the author—for example, if the writer is making an overall point about a topic and the focus is on the argument rather than on who made the argument—the writer might choose to use parenthetical citation.
3.) If the writer is using the same source multiple times throughout a paragraph, the writer might choose to vary the different methods to improve readability and add sentence variety. Avoiding repetitive citing techniques when summarizing sources can improve flow and source integration in paragraphs.
In sum, narrative and parenthetical citations are equally important, and when and how you use them depends on your specific goal in a paragraph and in using a particular source. Using narrative or parenthetical citation can stem from a conscious choice to focus on the author or information, but it can also stem from an aesthetic choice to improve readability. Whatever type of citation you choose to use, the Walden University Writing Center has resources to help you perfect APA formatting in your coursework!
Katherine McKinney is a writing instructor in the Walden University Writing Center. She received an M.A. in English from Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Education at Walden. Katherine's goal as an instructor is to show students that the best writing results from practice, and she aims to provide feedback and resources that will guide students through the invention, composition, and revision process.
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A writer might choose between narrative or parenthetical citation for several reasons:
1.) If the writer wants to highlight the author—for example, if the writer is making an argument about the author or highlighting what different authors argued about the same topic—the writer might choose to use narrative citation.
2.) If the writer wants to highlight the information rather than the author—for example, if the writer is making an overall point about a topic and the focus is on the argument rather than on who made the argument—the writer might choose to use parenthetical citation.
3.) If the writer is using the same source multiple times throughout a paragraph, the writer might choose to vary the different methods to improve readability and add sentence variety. Avoiding repetitive citing techniques when summarizing sources can improve flow and source integration in paragraphs.
In sum, narrative and parenthetical citations are equally important, and when and how you use them depends on your specific goal in a paragraph and in using a particular source. Using narrative or parenthetical citation can stem from a conscious choice to focus on the author or information, but it can also stem from an aesthetic choice to improve readability. Whatever type of citation you choose to use, the Walden University Writing Center has resources to help you perfect APA formatting in your coursework!
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September Webinar Preview
September feels like back to school season! Join us for one of our many
live, interactive Writing Center webinars in September to learn more about academic writing and APA Style.
Can't make it to one of our live webinars? No worries! We record all of our webinars and publish them in our webinar archive for you to view at your convenience.
The Walden University Writing Center produces a live webinar each and every week. Walden University students are encouraged to participate and practice their scholarly writing skills with one of our instructors or editors.
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Webinar Calendar
| Title: | APA Formatting & Style: Beyond Citing Sources |
| Date: | Thursday, September 6, 2018 |
| Time (Eastern): | 7:00PM - 8:00PM |
| Audience: | All Students |
| Title: | Writing and Responding to Discussion Posts |
| Date: | Monday, September 10, 2018 |
| Time (Eastern): | 1:00PM - 2:00PM |
| Audience: | All Students |
| Title: | Demonstrating Critical Thinking in Writing Assignments |
| Date: | Thursday, September 13, 2018 |
| Time (Eastern): | 8:00PM - 9:00PM |
| Audience: | All Students |
| Title: | Master's Students: Revising and Proofreading Your Coursework Documents |
| Date: | Tuesday, September 18, 2018 |
| Time (Eastern): | 11:30AM - 12:30PM |
| Audience: | Masters Students |
| Title: | Top APA Mistakes and How to Fix Them |
| Date: | Wednesday, September 19, 2018 |
| Time (Eastern): | 10:30AM - 11:30AM |
| Audience: | Masters Students |
| Title: | Writing at the Graduate Level |
| Date: | Wednesday, September 26, 2018 |
| Time (Eastern): | 6:00PM - 7:00PM |
| Audience: | All Students |
Can't make it to one of our live webinars? No worries! We record all of our webinars and publish them in our webinar archive for you to view at your convenience.
The Walden University Writing Center produces a live webinar each and every week. Walden University students are encouraged to participate and practice their scholarly writing skills with one of our instructors or editors.
Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time
Handling the Hot Thoughts: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Writing
Although I am a professional writer and educator, writing
does not always come easy for me. When I am facing a bad case of writer’s block,
I rely on a psychotherapy technique I learned from a therapist: cognitive
behavioral therapy.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy
developed by Dr. Aaron Beck in the 1960’s (Greenberger & Padesky, 1995).
This therapy treats stress, depression, and anxiety by helping a person to
identify and challenge their negative thoughts (Greenberger & Padesky,
1995). With practice, CBT can help a person to automatically identify negative
thinking and turn thoughts from negative to positive.
Note: This blog provides just a summary of CBT, but you can
find more information on the topic from Greenberger and Padesky’s book Mind Over Mood (1995). Before I jump into using CBT for writing anxiety, please know
I am not trained in any kind of therapy or mental health care. These are just
tips I have found to be helpful when I’m battling my own writing anxieties.
Step 1: Identify your situation and mood (Greenberger &
Padesky, 1995)
The first step in using CBT for writing is to identify the
situation and how you are feeling (Greenberger & Padesky, 1995). For
example: Last week I was struggling to write a work assignment that asked for
my personal opinion. In this example, the situation was a work assignment, and
I felt nervous and insecure about providing my personal opinion. Because of
these feelings, I found myself procrastinating on the assignment.
Other examples of situation and mood may include:
- You’re writing a major assessment for a course and you have no idea where to start. You pored over research, but you are putting off writing because you feel overwhelmed.
- You’re almost done with an annotated bibliography. The annotations and entries are done, but now you are stuck on the introduction. You’re feeling anxious about finishing this assignment because it is worth such a large percentage of your course grade.
Step 2: Identify your automatic thoughts and the hot thought
(Greenberger & Padesky, 1995)
As you are identifying your situation and mood, where do you
find your thoughts going? For my work assignment, my automatic thoughts
included: “I will have to turn this assignment in late. My coworkers will be
upset with me. Everyone will think I am terrible at my job.” Yikes! My thoughts
went to a pretty extreme place. In my automatic thoughts, “Everyone will think
I am terrible at my job” is definitely the hottest or scariest thought.
Using the same situations and moods as above, here are some
examples of automatic and hot thoughts:
- “I have no idea how to start this paper, because I am not good at writing. Hot thought: Whatever I turn in will be terrible.”
- “I have no idea what to write for this introduction. What if I finish this assignment and I get a terrible grade? Hot thought: If I get a terrible grade, my overall course grade will drop.”
Step 3: Identify evidence that does not support the hot
thought, and instead, develop an alternative thought (Greenberger &
Padesky, 1995)
I could have let my automatic thoughts continue to spiral,
but I was able to stop and counter my negative thinking by looking for evidence
to support my hot thought. Did I have any proof that my coworkers thought I was
terrible? My coworkers had always been very supportive of my work. They had given
me praise and encouragement on many projects. There was no evidence to support
my hot thought. I had never turned in an assignment late before, and I knew I
could still make the deadline because I had performed this kind of task in the
past! My alternative thought or my positive, rational idea was, “I might have
to ask for an extension, but I have to try first.”
Here are some examples of looking for evidence that does not
support hot thoughts and alternative thoughts:
- I have never turned in a terrible paper before. While I may have done poorly on some writing assignments in the past, I was able to revise my writing and learn from the experience. Alternative Thought: I am confident in all the research I have done. I can freewrite my first draft and then get help from the Writing Center.
- So far I have not received a bad grade in this class. In fact, my instructor has been happy with my writing. Alternative thought: I may be stuck now, but I will begin by outlining my introduction. If I am still struggling with writer’s block, I will reach out to my instructor for feedback.
Ultimately, CBT is about addressing the negative thoughts
that hold us back, and turning them into positive thoughts that move us
forward. By working through this process, we have to slow down and rationalize
our worst fears. More often than not, these fears are unfounded. With time and
practice, applying CBT to your writing anxieties may happen automatically.
Reference
Greenberger, D., & Padesky, C. A. (1995). Mind over
mood. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Tasha Sookochoff is a writing instructor in the Walden University Writing Center. Along with earning degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Stout and Depaul University, Tasha has written documentation for the U.S. House of Representatives that increases government transparency, blogged for DePaul University, copy-edited the Journal of Second Language Writing, tutored immigrants and refugees at literacy centers, and taught academic writing to college students.
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Thursday Thoughts: Restorative Writing for Social Change
Social change is one focus that sets Walden University apart. Here in the Writing Center, we're excited to support writers as they work towards social change by offering several resources related to the topic.
We are excited to add a new webinar to our webinar archive. Using Restorative Writing to Enact Social Change explores how you can use writing to work through difficult experiences and events and move towards social change in your community. In this hour long webinar that you can watch at any time, you will learn what restorative writing is and be able to practice it with several guided writing exercises.
Check out these other great resources related to restorative writing for social change:
The Walden University Writing Center helps student writers at all points of the writing process by providing one on one writing instruction, modules, webinars, a podcast, and blog.
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Check out these other great resources related to restorative writing for social change:
- WriteCast Episode 36: Social Change and Difficult Conversations is a podcast episode devoted to handling difficult conversations related to change
- In the blog post How to Write for Positive Social Change, Dissertation Editor Lydia talks through how to explain the social change implications of your academic work at Walden
- Exploring Perspectives is another webinar focused on writing for social change
- The Academic Skills Center has a Creative Writing for Social Change webinar in their archive and is also hosting a virtual conference on Using Your Skills for Social Change on October 4, 2018
- For more on the importance of social change here at Walden, see the Social Change at Walden web page
The Walden University Writing Center helps student writers at all points of the writing process by providing one on one writing instruction, modules, webinars, a podcast, and blog.
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Top 10 Preproposal and Proposal Fixes for Capstone Writers: Part II
Last week, we began our presentation on top fixes for those working on capstone projects here at Walden University. We made recommendations to writers about streamlining language use to capture an effective scholarly voice. Today, we are pleased to present the rest of our suggestions that cover topics like how to consider your reader as you write and how to review APA errors as you revise. The strategies we present today come from years of working with Walden capstone writers in the preproposal and proposal stages of their programs. We're happy to share what we've learned with you today!
Fixes 4-6: Keeping Your Reader In Mind
Claire Helakoski is a Writing Instructor and Tara Kachgal is a Dissertation Editor in the Walden University Writing Center. Both are dedicated to supporting writers as the begin, progress, and complete their capstone projects.
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Fixes 4-6: Keeping Your Reader In Mind
4. Try to avoid ending sections with a citation (unless
explicitly required by your program). Instead focus on your project. Claire
often notes that in preproposal documents the significance or other sections
end with a piece of evidence. However, since the purpose of your work should be
unique (no one else has done this particular study before), inclusion of a
citation at the end of a section gives me as a reader the wrong emphasis. For
clarity and flow, I always recommend trying to refocus readers on your project
at the end of sections where possible.
5. Students writing a doctoral study or dissertation should make
sure that key terms are defined appropriately and helpfully. Readers (and you!)
need to be clear about the operational and conceptual definitions used in your
document. When composing and revising this section of your study, first ask
yourself whether the list includes all of the terms a reader needs to understand
to follow your argument. Then, scrutinize the definitions to make sure that
they are succinct and sufficiently descriptive and that they provide readers
with clear definitions of terms as they are used in your study. Support your
definitions with appropriate citations. Remember to arrange definitions in
ascending alphabetical order (A, B, C, D, etc.) and indent them like
paragraphs. In addition, definitional terms should be italicized and in
sentence case and followed by a nonitalicized colon.
6. Be sure to follow APA guidelines for abbreviations. This fix
relates to keeping your reader in mind because abbreviations are meant to help
out your reader—you want to abbreviate terms you’ll be using over and over and
find a helpful and clear abbreviation to use to assist readers. You want to be
consistent and to follow APA style specifications. Sometimes, inclusion of
abbreviations can be distracting and unhelpful to readers, particularly if many
abbreviations are used within a sentence or paragraph. Readers are also
distracted by the inconsistent use of abbreviations in a text (e.g., an
abbreviation is introduced, but the full term is used in subsequent sentences). See
also: our webpage on APA abbreviations.
Fixes 7-10: Review APA Errors as You Revise
7. Ensure that “References” at the beginning of your reference
section is centered, flush left, but not bold. Per APA, References is treated
as a title rather than a heading for formatting. See APA, p. 62, for a helpful
overview of how to format headings in APA. For doctoral capstone writers, the Form and Style Review Checklist also includes a quick and easy-to-grasp overview of
headings.
8. Don’t list the
library or a database as your source URL. A reader who isn’t a Walden student
or who does not have access to a certain database can’t use a database URL.
Instead, first search for the doi number. If there is no doi number, then type the name of the
journal/source into Google. Find that source’s Internet homepage and copy and
paste the homepage link after “retrieved from” in your reference (be sure to
undo the automatic hyperlink).
9. Make sure your
reference list and sources in your document match. You’ll work on these
documents over a long period of time, so having some sources that are cut or
never used is understandable! But not having a reference entry for a source a
reader wants to look up, or listing a source you never reference, is confusing
to the reader, so be sure to double check.
10. Check that you’ve
used & and “and” correctly in your citations. If a citation is in
parentheses (or in your reference list), always use “&”—think of it as a
shorthand. If you’ve referenced the authors as part of the meaning of the
sentence, spell out “and” as this is part of your larger text. See also: additional citation resources.
We are confident that making the fixes we’ve
identified will strengthen your doctoral study and make your experience more
enjoyable. The preproposal stage is a great time to start using this list. In
the comments box, be sure to share whether you have your own list of easy fixes
for capstone proofreading and revising.
Claire Helakoski is a Writing Instructor and Tara Kachgal is a Dissertation Editor in the Walden University Writing Center. Both are dedicated to supporting writers as the begin, progress, and complete their capstone projects.
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