InTextZitaten

InTextZitaten is the term used to describe the practice of inserting brief bibliographic references directly into the main text of a document to acknowledge the sources of information, ideas, or quotations. The aim is to let readers identify sources without consulting a separate notes section.

InTextZitaten typically take two main forms. In the narrative form, the author’s name is integrated into the sentence, with year (and sometimes page numbers) in parentheses, e.g., Müller (2020) argues that ... or Müller (2020, p. 45) shows ... In the parenthetical form, the citation appears at the end of the sentence or clause as parentheses, e.g., (Müller, 2020, p. 45). Some styles also require a DOI or URL for online sources.

Styles and conventions vary. Common citation systems include APA and Chicago author-date, which use author-year citations in parentheses; MLA favors author-page style as in (Müller 45). Chicago also offers a notes-and-bibliography approach that relies on footnotes for source information, supplemented by a bibliography. In other traditions, in-text citations may resemble footnote markers, with full details in the notes.

Best practices include consistency, including author, year, page numbers where relevant, and avoiding excessive clutter. Citation management software (Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley) and document editors help generate and format InTextZitaten automatically, linking to full bibliographic records and DOIs.

See also: citation style, in-text citation, bibliographic database, reference management.