It sounds painful, but it doesn’t have to be! Basically, when you use in-text citations, you are telling the reader where you got any and all information that did not come from inside your own head. This is more obvious when you are directly quoting from a source, but it is also needed when you have summarized or paraphrased from a source and even if you got an idea from somewhere else.
So how do you do it?
References in the text should be cited in one of three ways:
References should be numbered sequentially. If a reference is cited more than once, it does not receive a new number. If citing more than one reference at a time, include reference numbers in increasing order separated by commas.
Italic Number Example: …preparing N-(p-nitroaryl)amides (2).
Author Name and Date Example: …preparing N-(p-nitroaryl)amides (Stern and Cheng, 1995).