The two shapes every APA citation takes
Every in-text citation in APA is one of two shapes. Parenthetical: the whole citation sits in parentheses after the idea. Narrative: the author is part of your sentence and only the year is bracketed.
Both are correct everywhere. The narrative form reads better when the author matters to your argument; the parenthetical form keeps the prose moving when the finding matters more than who found it. Papers that use only one shape read robotic, so mix them.
Page numbers: when they are required
The rule is short. Quoting the source's exact words: page number required. Paraphrasing in your own words: page number optional but appreciated when the source is long.
Quotes of 40 words or more become a block quote: indented half an inch, no quotation marks, and the citation goes after the final period instead of before it. That placement flip on block quotes is a detail markers reliably check.
Author counts, the part APA 7 simplified
Missing dates and twin years
No date on the source: write n.d. where the year would go, matching the reference entry: (Robertson, n.d.). Two works by the same author in the same year: label them a and b in the order they appear in your alphabetized reference list, then cite (Garcia, 2022a) and (Garcia, 2022b). The letters live in both places or the reader cannot match them.
Citing several sources for one claim: pack them into one set of parentheses, alphabetical, separated by semicolons: (Chen, 2024; Nguyen et al., 2022; Smith, 2023). Do not chain separate parentheses one after another.
The as cited in trap
You read Larsen's 2019 book, and Larsen quotes a 1913 letter by Freud. You want the Freud line. You did not read Freud; you read Larsen. APA handles this with a secondary source citation:
Only Larsen appears in your reference list, because Larsen is what you actually read. Two warnings: professors treat heavy as cited in use as a sign you did not do the reading, so chase the original when it is findable. And never silently cite the original as if you read it; that is how misquotes travel between papers for decades.
Personal communications
Interviews you conducted, emails, lecture comments, private messages: cite them in the text only, because your reader can never retrieve them. Format: (A. Rahman, personal communication, March 3, 2026). They get no reference list entry at all, which surprises everyone the first time.