A citation or reference is the information given in a bibliography or a database about a particular title, which often includes:
Citations give credit to those whose ideas have contributed to your research and give your readers enough information to locate the sources you used. There are many ways to format citations. The style you choose depends on your field and the requirements set by your professor or publisher.
Any time a source is directly quoted or paraphrased it needs to be cited within the text, in addition to appearing in the list of references.
Direct Quote: You will need to include the author, year of publication, and page number of the quote.
Paraphrasing: APA requires that, with paraphrasing, the author and year of publication be included in the in-text citation. The inclusion of the page number is not required but is encouraged.