What do I do when the text I’m reading quotes someone else, and I want to reference that quote?
Answer
The best thing to do in this case is to try and look up the original work and quote that, but if that isn’t possible then reference the words you want, as quoted in what you have read, and mention the author of the quotes in the body of your writing. The person you cite in-text and in the reference list should be the person who wrote the document you’re reading.
So, if you are reading an article by Alderton, and that article quotes J. Z. Smith, and you want to use the Smith quote, it would look like this:
As J. Z. Smith has noted, ‘It is the study of religion that invented religion’ (Alderton, 2014, p. 222).
For more information, see page 150 of our APA guide