Parenthetical Citations (In-Text)
In MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what is known as parenthetical citation. This method involves placing relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or a paraphrase. The citation consists of author-page style and shall end with a full stop right after the parentheses.
MLA style follows the author-page method of parenthetical citations.
(Last name p.#)
Therefore, the author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase. Still, the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence.
Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (263).
Romantic poetry is characterized by the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth 263).
If the work has only one title by a particular author or editor, you only need to place the author’s last name and the relevant page number(s) without any intervening punctuation in your parenthetical reference.
Example: (Smith 12).
If the work has three or more authors, follow the form in the bibliographic entry in your works cited list: give the author’s last name followed by et al., then the page number(s) without any intervening punctuation.
Example: (Jones et al. 25-37).
If there are citations to material by different authors with the same surname:
Example: Neurological pathways are created through habitual actions (J. Stevens 87).
If there are two or more titles by the same author:
Give the author’s last name, the title, followed by the page number(s). Abbreviate the title if it is longer than a few words. When abbreviating the title, begin with the first word.
Example: The fashion was very popular in certain parts of Northern England (Pollack, Dickinson 32- 33). (In the example, ‘Dickinson’ is the shortened title of Pollack’s Dickinson: The Anxiety of Gender).
If there is no author, the in-text citation would contain the title.
The title may appear in:
Example: Classical Mythology of Greece notes that he was cut up and boiled in a cauldron by Titans sent by Hera (78).
Example: He was cut up and boiled in a cauldron by Titans sent by Hera (Classical Mythology 78).
Whenever you can, take material from the original source. Sometimes, however, only an indirect source is available. If what you quote or paraphrase is itself a quotation:
Put the abbreviation qtd. in (“quoted in”) before the indirect source you cite in your parenthetical reference.
N.B.: You may wish to clarify the relation between the original and secondhand 8 sources in a note.
Example: Lawrence Christy remarked that Lindsay Ryan had a “unique style of debate” (qtd. in Anderson 107).
For your list of works cited, give the indirect source (Anderson) not the source quoted (Christy).