In-text citations

In-text citations acknowledge material you’ve borrowed from another source. They appear within the text and point the reader to full references elsewhere.

There are 2 common citation systems in use in Australia:

  • The documentary note referencing system uses superscript identifiers that direct you to endnotes or footnotes.
  • The author–date system uses bracketed insertions in the text for a short-form reference, followed by a reference list that has the reference in full.

The ASG entry on referencing systems discusses the advantages of each system in more detail.

Documentary note system
Use a superscript numeral after the cited content and link to an endnote

The documentary note system is more common in the government and corporate environments.

It places a superscript numeral in the body text to mark information taken from another source. Place this numeral:

  • immediately after a direct quote, where possible
  • before commas, semicolons and similar mid-sentence punctuation
  • after punctuation at the end of the sentence (usually a full stop).
Population growth has decreased by 2.3% over the 5 years to 20153, despite government initiatives to raise the birth rate.
Population growth has decreased by 2.3% over the 5 years to 2015.3

Then give the full reference in an endnote or footnote with the same superscript number.

3 H Blackberry, Analysing Long-Term Population Trends, Bluetone Books, Canberra, 2015.

If you have to reference multiple sources at once, you only need 1 superscript number. List the full references alphabetically in an endnote or footnote with that number.

The ASG recommends using endnotes rather than footnotes for the detailed citation because it causes less disruption to reading.

Author–date system
Put the author’s family name and the year of publication in brackets at the end of the sentence
We need to fix the gender imbalance in the teacher workforce (Davis 2018).

The author–date system is increasingly common in academic texts and publications.

This shows the author’s surname and the year the source was published in round brackets (parentheses) within the text, generally at the end of the sentence before the final full stop. 

Population growth has decreased by 2.3% over the 5 years to 2015 (Blackberry 2015).

If the author is an organisation, use its full name or a shortened form that you’ve already introduced.

Sapphire Social Modelling (SSM) reports that population growth has decreased by 2.3% over the 5 years to 2015 (SSM 2015).

If there is more than 1 author, present them in the order they appear on the title page:

Number of authorsExamples
2 or 3

  (Whitehead & Brownlow 2010)

  (Whitehead, Brownlow & Da Silva 2010)

4+

  (Whitehead et al 2010)

You can then provide the full reference details in a reference list at the end of the document, arranged alphabetically by family name.

Blackberry, H 2015, Analysing Long-Term Population Trends, Bluestone Books, Canberra.
See also:   Ampersands &,  Reference lists,  Referencing systems