Citing a Summary of a Source
Summaries are the most common form of citation. They require that you put into your own words material gathered from other sources. You do not need to cite your own ideas, common knowledge, or information you have seen in multiple sources, unless it is controversial in some way. Summarizing other sources is a good way to demonstrate that you can use academic sources to help you present your thesis or argument in your own words.
Summaries require that you provide the author and the date of the original source. Your summary should be in your own words while acknowledging the contribution of others.
In many cases you can cite the work of others at the end of the summarized sentence (Wilson, 2006). You can also mix it up. One approach is to use language such as:
As Portillo (2007) argues…
One approach (Willis, 2008) is to….
According to Newmark (2009)….
Others suggest (Merola, 2008)
When summarizing more than one author, separate the citations with a ; such as:
Some researchers disagree (Agha, 2007; Rudes, 2006). They argue instead….
When a source has two authors use the & to denote 'and' such as:
One view (Mastrofski & Willis, 2007) is that…
A publication by three to five authors should be cited in full the first time and then use et al. after the first name in subsequent citations such as:
In one study (Jones, Marise, Gunther, 2003) crime rates rose when the economy worsened. Yet as they acknowledge (Jones et al. 2003), this may have been related to other factors.
Still confused? For more on citations see the Writing Center's APA Citation QuickGuide (PDF) or this site at Purdue's OWL.