Rule of the week: APA 7.12, in-text citations.

Each week we take one journal rule and show the before-and-after redline. This week: APA 7.12, the ordering of multiple works inside a single parenthetical citation.

The rule

When you cite several works at once, APA orders them alphabetically by first author, the same order they appear in the reference list, separated by semicolons. Not by year, not by importance.

Before

(Rahman, 2019; Al-Amri, 2021; Chen, 2018)

The works are ordered by year. A reviewer familiar with APA reads this as a sign the manuscript was not checked against the style, and starts looking for more.

After

(Al-Amri, 2021; Chen, 2018; Rahman, 2019)

Alphabetical by first author. The change is small, the signal is not: it tells the reviewer the citations were handled with care.

Why it matters

No single citation decides acceptance. The pattern does. When Waraq applies this rule, the edit carries a chip reading RULE APA-7.12. Tap it, read the rule and its source. Nothing here is opinion.