When writing a sociological paper rather than a science paper, they prefer to use the American Psychology Association (APA) format for citations. In order to make this format work, you must include the LaTeX module natbib so that the author names can be handled correctly.

But natbib is a re-implementation of \cite, so following lists what can be done when natbib is included:

Options at \usepackage

Syntax:

\usepackage[comma-separated-options]{natbib}

Option list:

  • style of presentation:
    • authoryear (default): author-year type
    • numbers: author and a sequence number
    • super: author and a superscripted sequence number
    • nonamebreak: no line-break within a citation
  • brackets:
    • round (default): use parenthesis
    • square: use square brackets
    • curly: use braces
    • angle: use angle brackets
  • style of multiple citation:
    • sort: sort by order of appearance in bibliographic list
    • sort&compress: and additionally, compress numerics like IEEE (if applicable)
    • longnamesfirst: first one in full author list and subsequent in abbreviated list
    • colon (default): use colons for separation
    • comma: use comma for separation
  • bibliographic list:
    • sectionbib: use \section* instead of \chapter* for \thebibliography (see chapterbib package)

Commands

Citation commands:

  • \citet - name et al (year)
  • \citep - (name et al, year)
  • \citet* - name and name and name (year)
  • \citep* - (name and name and name, year)

Optionally, you can put options to append some text before and after the citation, e.g.

\citep[see][sec 1]{tag}

gives: (see somebody, year, sec 1)

Alternative citation commands:

  • \citealt - same as \citet, but without parenthesis
  • \citealp - same as \citep, but without parenthesis
  • \citealt* - same as \citet*, but without parenthesis
  • \citealp* - same as \citep*, but without parenthesis
  • \citeauthor - just the author
  • \citeauthor* - just the author in full list
  • \citeyear - just the year without parenthesis
  • \citeyearpar - just the year in parenthesis