While a writer may configure the internal citation for a paraphrase in many ways when composing an APA style paper, two pieces of information must always appear somewhere in the paraphrased content: the author’s (or authors’) last name (or last names) and the year of the source’s publication.
The safest and simplest way to satisfy this requirement involves the inclusion of a short parenthetical tag placed after the paraphrase but before the period.
For Example—
Writers may need to divide the composition of a long piece into shorter sections; otherwise, the extent of the project may mentally overwhelm them and prohibit them from even starting to write (Lamott, 1995).
If the source includes two authors, connect them with an ampersand.
For example—
(Conrad & Joyce, 2017)
If the source includes three or more authors, cite the source with an abbreviated parenthetical tag that includes the first author’s last name, the Latin phrase “et al.,” and the year of publication.
For example—
Writers should site a 2020 work by Faulkner, Capote, O’Connor, and McCarthy in the following format:
(Faulkner et al., 2020)
Note that if the source includes no listed author, whatever appears first on the source’s entry on the reference page will occupy the author’s spot in the in-text citation. Depending on the source, this may be a corporate author, an organization, or a title. And if the source includes no listed year of publication, the initials n.d. will occupy the corresponding spot in the in-text citation.
Also note that quotation marks never surround a paraphrase like they would surround a direct quote.
Thoughts, Revised & Refined 