Citation is Incorrectly Showing in Bold Font

In-text citations in an APA or MLA paper should be formatted in the same font as the rest of your paper. However, occasionally you may encounter a citation in your PERRLA paper that is incorrectly showing in bold font. If this happens, don't worry as it is an easy fix.

The reason this has happened is because the paragraph accidentally had Heading formatting applied to it. Even if you're able to successfully apply Paragraph formatting back to the paragraph, the citation will still be in bold. This is due to the citation being inside a Word content control, meaning the font can't be easily altered.

Below are instructions to resolve it.

1. Click the References & Citations button in the PERRLA ribbon.
2. Click the small arrow to the left of the reference that is the parent of the citation you're having problems with.
3. Click the three small dots to the right of the problem citation.
4. Click Delete Citation. (This will add the text "(CITATION DELETED)" in place of the citation. Leave it as a placeholder.)
5. Highlight the entire paragraph, including the "(CITATION DELETED)" text.
6. Click the Text & Heading Style button in the PERRLA ribbon.
7. Click Paragraph in the dropdown menu.
8. Recreate the citation where "(CITATION DELETED)" is serving as a placeholder.
9. Manually delete the "(CITATION DELETED)" text.

Your citation and entire paragraph will now have the proper APA or MLA paragraph formatting applied.