APA 7: Verb Tense and Reporting Verbs

Verb Tense

The past tense or present perfect tense are appropriate when discussing a researcher’s work. Use the past or present perfect tenses in your in-text citations.

Past

Berry (2022) and Gimmel et al. (2020) discovered that young people in foster care are at high risk for psychiatric disorders and poor long-term functional outcomes.

Wood (2018) and Winter (2008) used tribal critical race theory to explore the necessity and importance of letting Native people be the authority on their culture’s representation and allowing them to center their lived experiences and speak for themselves.

Present Perfect

Researchers have discovered that young people in foster care are at high risk for psychiatric disorders and poor long-term functional outcomes (Berry, 2022; Gimmel et al., 2020).

Other scholars have used tribal critical race theory to explore the necessity and importance of letting Native people be the authority on their culture’s representation and allowing them to center their lived experiences and speak for themselves (Wood, 2018; Writer, 2008).

Common Verbs (Reporting Verbs) Used in Academic Writing

Reporting verbs are used to convey what someone else has said or written. We use these in in-text citations to describe the ideas we are citing from authors’ works.

Adapted from American Psychological Association publication manual (7th ed.).