In one sentence, describe what the following article is about:

When referencing a source with two authors, be sure to use both last names within one single phrase. When citing within the text, the names are joined with the word “and,” followed by the date of publication in parentheses. For parenthetical citation, use an ampersand, followed by a comma and the year of publication, all within parentheses. As in MLA, the parenthetical citation should appear after the sentence has ended, but prior to the period. For example, “(Smith & Jones, 2001).”  Name both authors every time you cite this source. An example in-text citation would look like this: “Information gathered by Smith and Jones (2006) indicated that….” Parenthetical citation would look like this: “ … (Smith & Jones, 2006).” APA style requires you to name each author within a single phrase only the first time you cite this source. Join the authors’ names with an “and” within the text and with an ampersand for parenthetical citation. For successive citations, just use the first author’s last name and “et al.”  In-text citation for the initial reference: “…Smith, Jones, White, Johnson, and McMahon (2006).” Parenthetical citation for the initial reference: “(Smith, Jones, White, Johnson, & McMahon, 2006).” Subsequent referencing for in-text citation: “Information gathered by Smith, et al. (2006).” Subsequent referencing for parenthetical citation: “(Smith et al., 1993)” When referencing sources with six authors or more, use the first author’s last name only for both parenthetical and in-text citations, followed by “et al.”   In-text citation: “Smith et al. (2006) stated…” Parenthetical citation: “(Smith et al., 2006)” Sometimes a source has no author or the author cannot be found. When this is the case, use the source’s title; if the title is lengthy, you can shorten it and include only the first word or two within the parentheses.  Cite sources with unknown author. As with MLA style, use the article’s title (or a shortened version of the title) in place of an author’s name: “The experiment yielded multiple results (“Learning Theory,” 2006).” Titles of web pages, articles, and chapters are cited using quotation marks. Titles of reports and books are italicized. As in MLA style, if your source is a government agency or an organization, use the entire name during your initial citation. If the name has an abbreviation, indicate it within brackets the first time citing this source. For subsequent citations, only use the abbreviation.  First citation: (Public Action to Deliver Shelter [P.A.D.S.], 2006) Second citation: (P.A.D.S., 2006) There are times when you may need to reference two or more sources within one parenthetical in-text citation. When doing this, separate the two sources using a semicolon, then the sources in alphabetical order by author’s last name. Your citation would look like this, (Smith, 2006; Jones, 2008). At times you may run into two authors with the same name. When this occurs, simply avoid any uncertainties by using first initials along with the last names of both cited authors. Your citation would like this, (A. Smith, 2005; B. Jones, 2008). When using two or more sources published in the same year and authored by the same person, simply use lower case letters, alphabetically, after the year of publication to distinguish them. For example: “Discovered by Smith (2006a) during his experimental testing….” Treat in-text citations for introductions, prefaces, forewords, and afterwords like you would a simple author-date citation. Your citation would look like this, (Smith & Jones, 2005). Personal communication includes information gathered from interviews, e-mails, letters, and any other type of person-to-person communication. To reference any of these sources, include the communicator’s name, the date of communication, and identify this source as “personal communication.”  In-text citation: Smith stated that he conducted the experiment with the help of colleagues (personal communication, December 2, 2005). Parenthetical citation: “(Smith, personal communication, December 2, 2005).” Indirect sources are also called “secondary sources”; these are sources that are already cited by another source. The information from an indirect source is not the original source from which the information was initially collected. To cite this kind of source, use the original source in your single phrase and use the secondary source in parenthesis. Your citation would look like this: Smith proved within his experiment that….(as cited in Jones, 2006, p. 30). Your citation should look like this, Smith (2006) stated…   If you come across an electronic source with no author or date provided, use the entire title or the first word or two of the title, plus “n.d.” to denote “no date”. For electronic sources without page numbers, try to incorporate as much information as possible that would help the reader find the text being referenced.

Summary:
Use both authors’ last names when citing a work with two authors. Name each author the first time you cite a source with three to five authors. Cite sources with six or more authors. Include the source’s title when the source’s author is unknown. Cite organizations as an author. Use a semicolon to separate two or more sources that are cited within the same parentheses. Include authors’ first initials to avoid confusion between two cited authors with the same last name. Cite two or more sources with the same author and year. Cite introductions, prefaces, forewords, and afterwords. Include name and date when you cite personal information. Use “qtd” to indicate an indirect source in a citation. Cite electronic sources like any other kind of source, using the author-date approach to referencing.