Once you have found relevant sources, read them, and begun incorporating them into your writing, a common question arises: How often should I cite, and where should citations be placed?

As a general rule, citations should:

Appear immediately after a direct quotation.
Be included in the same sentence as a paraphrase.
Be provided every time you introduce information, ideas, or arguments from a source.
Clearly distinguish between your own ideas and those of other authors.

In other words, your reader should always be able to tell where information from a source ends and where your own contribution begins.

Below is an example taken from a student assignment showing incorrect placement of a citation. Can you identify why the citation is misplaced and suggest where it should go instead?

After this, media such as Instagram and Vine were launched; these platforms focused on sharing pictures and videos and quickly became very popular. Facebook and Twitter were already well-established at the time, so Facebook acquired Instagram, and Twitter acquired Vine. Subsequently, Vine was shut down due to declining popularity. This is where I choose to stop the history section; I could have written more about newer social media platforms that have emerged, but I feel they have not established themselves enough to be relevant here. Now we have looked at the history, and now we will examine what these platforms have done to today's society and agenda. (Morrison & Foerster, 2012).

The placement of the citation is incorrect because:

The paragraph begins with an indirect quote (paraphrase) of a source, but no citation is provided.
The phrase "This is where I choose..." signals a shift from source-based information to the student's own comments. However, because no citation appears before this transition, the boundary between the source material and the student's own contribution is unclear.
The citation is placed at the end of the paragraph, making it difficult for the reader to determine which parts of the paragraph are drawn from external sources and which are the student's own contributions.

Here the citation is placed correctly:

After this, media such as Instagram and Vine were launched; these platforms focused on sharing pictures and videos and quickly became very popular. Facebook and Twitter were already well-established at the time, so Facebook acquired Instagram, and Twitter acquired Vine. Subsequently, Vine was shut down due to declining popularity (Morrison & Foerster, 2012, p. 39). This is where I choose to stop the history section; I could have written more about newer social media platforms that have emerged, but I feel they have not established themselves enough to be relevant here. Now we have looked at the history, and now we will examine what these platforms have done to today's society and agenda.

The placement is correct because:

The citation appears immediately after the paraphrased information.
The citation clearly marks the point where the paraphrase ends and the student's own contribution and discussion begins.
It makes it easy to distinguish between what is original text and what has been sourced from others’ work.

Note that the citation includes a page number, which is not mandatory for indirect quotes according to APA 7th, but is strongly recommended.

The purpose of citations is to create a clear distinction between what you have drawn from others and what is your own contribution to the text is. Because sources are used in different ways, there is no fixed rule for exactly how often citations should appear. The answer depends on how frequently you use information from sources, whether you are quoting directly or paraphrasing and whether several consecutive sentences are based on the same source or not. However, it should always be easy for your reader to find your sources, so when in doubt, cite it! It is usually better to cite too often than too seldom.

A useful way to improve your own source use is to pay close attention to how authors cite sources in the articles and books you read. Over time, you will develop a clearer sense of how sources are integrated into scholarly writing.

A useful rule of thumb: If a reader asks, "How do you know that?", the answer should often be a citation. If the information comes from a source, make sure the source is clearly cited before you move on to your own discussion.