MLA Style In-text Citation
Modern Language Association (MLA) documentation is used primarily for English papers and uses a parenthetical format. This is a system of using parentheses within the body of the paper, instead of footnotes or endnotes. Remember that you must provide a parenthetical reference every time you include in your essay information or ideas that come from another source, whether or not you quote directly from the source. You will also include a Works Cited List at the end of the paper.
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A few typical parenthetical references are offered below. Consult the
print edition of The MLA Handbook, 5th Edition, for more detailed
information.
(or see the current edition of your handbook)
Sources with a Single Author
If you use the author to introduce the quotation, then only the page number would appear in the parentheses:
Ex. According to R. Lewis, "When Thoreau would sit outside his house . . ." (93).
If you don't use the author to introduce the quote, state the author's last name and the page number within parentheses:
Ex. Thoreau believed that, since America was a new nation, it had an abundance of natural resources; but he could see something had to be done to preserve them. He had traveled to Europe and observed firsthand how abused and depleted the land of the Old World had become (Fussell 152).
Note: In both cases, there is no comma within the parentheses, and the period for the sentence follows the citation.
Sources with Multiple Authors
If your book has more than one author, use the authors' last names as they appear on the title page. Include each name, up to three authors:
Ex. In the 1970s the Great Pyramid inspired a fad of pyramid enthusiasts, who . . . (Schul and Pettit 159).
Schul and Pettit draw attention to the fact that in the 1970s the Great Pyramid . . . (159). (note that no quotes are used in these examples; they are examples of paraphrase)
If there are more than three use "et al." showing there are others:
Ex. The editors of Writing About the World set an agenda for their text book. They intend to "include the study of women as well as men, and people of color as well as Western European figures in university courses" (McLeod et al. 33).
Citing two or more works by the same author
When using more than one book by the same author, provide a shortened title of the book in each citation. The "Works Cited" or "Bibliography" will have two separate entries for this author.
Ex. Feodor Dostoyevsky declares that the "underground rebel is representative of our society (Underground 3). He seems to confirm this view in Raskolnikov's superman speech (Crime 383-84).
When the author's name does not appear in the text, it is placed first within the parentheses followed by a comma, the shortened title, and the page number. The shortened titles of the works should be italicized (if they are books, as here) or quoted, just as they would be in the Works Cited list.
Multivolume Work
When citing a work that has more than one volume, put the author, the volume followed by a colon and a space, and the page number within the parentheses:
Ex. It is interesting to note that while Johann Sebastian Bach composed in the modern era, his use of the polyphonic style was a regression to medieval music (Wallbank and Taylor 2: 67).
Quotation within a cited work
When referring to a quotation within a work not made by the author, write "qtd. in . . ." within the parentheses following the quotation.
Ex. Bernard Baruch states that "Mankind has always thought to substitute energy for reason" (qtd. in Ringer 274).
Note: On your Works Cited page you would use Ringer as the author of the work
cited, then the title of his book, etc.
If a quotation from your source will take up more than four full lines of your text, then indent the whole quotation 10 spaces from the left margin (in print texts do not indent the right margin; in electronic texts, it is okay to indent the right margin along with the left margin.). Skip two spaces after the concluding punctuation mark, then add the parenthetical reference. Here is an example:
Arguments abound about the value of technology in education, but we should not lose sight of the importance of the written text as instructional tool. At the Waldorf schools in California, the book, albeit in a non-traditional form, plays a central role in each student's learning:
The main lesson- books at typical Waldorf schools are filled with students' careful records of field trips and classroom experiments; impressions of the teachers' regular oral presentations; and, in more advanced classes, syntheses of what the students have read in primary sources. The texts are neatly handwritten, with fountain pens. They are also often accompanied by detailed drawings and poetry, some of which the students have written themselves. (Oppenheimer 75)
While it can be argued that these "lesson books" could be produced just as easily on a computer, it seems fair to ask whether the kind of intimate involvement with one's own learning so evident in these books would be present in the computerized context.
Note: In a print text using double spacing (the norm), do not adjust line spacing for an indented quote. Simply keep double-spacing before, after, and within the quote. In an electronic text using single spacing (the norm), double space before and after a long quote. The quote itself should be single-spaced.