Showing Where You Got It

Overview of what they look like

Return to the Citation Mechanics page and find "What It Looks Like" to get an overview if in-text citations.

Rules

Do your Works Cited entry first because you have to know what it says before you make the parenthetical reference.

Here's the basic format for all MLA Works Cited page entries:

Item 1: Name of author(s). Item 2: "Name of the Article, Web Page, etc." (if it's not a whole book). Item 3: Name of the Larger Work. Item 4: Small information such as edition number. Item 5: Publication information.

When you make the in-text reference, your first choice would be (Item 1 + page number). If it's a resource that doesn't have page numbers, simply don't put anything in. Don't invent a page number or put in any abbreviation such as n.p. If you don't have an author name, go for Item 2. Your absolute last choice would be the publisher's name or the Internet address—use them only in the extremely unlikely event that your source has no author, no title, no editor, and no other distinguishing marks.

Source by one author

(Smith 123) Author's last name, followed by page number you are referring to. (You can also use a range if you're summarizing a longer section).

Source by two or more authors

(Smith and Jones 123) Authors' last names in the order they're given on the title page, followed by page number information.

Two authors with the same last name

If your Works Cited page has two authors with the same last name, the in-text citation should give first and last name (John Smith 123).

No author

Newspaper and Internet articles sometimes appear without stating the author's name. Go to the next item in the list above. If it's an article (your most likely case), give the article name or a shortened form in quotation marks, followed by the page number if you have it ("Havana Gears Up for Huge Concert"). If it's a book without an author (less likely), give the book title in italics, followed by the page number (The Naked Roommate 123).

Punctuating the citation

With one exception, the parenthetical citation goes inside a sentence. If you are simply referring to a passage for authority or are writing a summary, put the citation inside the last period:

The book Fast Food Nation claims that one-quarter of Americans eat in a fast-food restaurant each day (Schlosser 3).

If you are quoting directly, the citation goes outside the final quotation mark, but inside the final period:

According to Schlosser, "the rate of obesity among American children is twice as high as it was in the late 1970s" (240).

The one odd exception occurs in those long quotations, the ones over four lines that are inset from the left margin an extra half inch. In these cases, the citation goes outside the final punctuation (don't ask me why):

. . . I see the McDonaldization of our food supply as the annihilation of our true relationship to life. (Robbins)

Special Internet rant

Many of my students are convinced that the web address (URL) is the only thing a Works Cited entry needs; the same students are convinced that the URL is the name of the article and/or the name of the author. They are wrong. Consider the page you're reading right now.

• The author's name is Curtis Allen.
• The page name is "In-Text Parenthetical Citations" (Look above the content and find that in the grey area framing the page)
• Neither the author nor the page itself is named parenthetical_in-text.html. That's just the address.

If you have a source that actually specifies no author, no page title, no actual title for the item itself, no sponsoring organization, and no date of last revision, perhaps a bare URL is the only thing you can put down (aside from the date you looked at the item). If that's the case, you have a source that's as trustworthy as a piece of paper you found on the bus.

Here's an MLA citation for a webpage that appeared to have absolutely no information available (I found the author name by following up his Twitter entry):

ViciousPotato. "Yar-Har-Fiddle-Dee-Dee." Yar-Har-Fiddle-Dee-Dee. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2009. <http://www.viciouspotato.net/>.

If I were to refer to this site in a paper, I would use the author's pseudonym (ViciousPotato), not the URL. If I hadn't been able to track down a name, a parenthetical citation of the website would look like this: (Yar-Har-Fiddle-Dee-Dee).

Wikipedia

Contrary to popular opinion, Wikipedia is not the best source on the net. Many professors will fail your paper if Wikipedia is your main source. As I point out on another page, Wikipedia has its own method of generating an MLA entry for the Works Cited page. Here's an example for the article on the Modern Language Association:

Wikipedia contributors. "Modern Language Association." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 20 Nov. 2015. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.

If I were writing a paper and citing material from this article, it would look like this:

The MLA has a long history, all the way back to 1883, and a broad influence, with more than 30,000 members around the world (Wikipedia contributors).

It wouldn't look like this—the web address only says that the article in question is one of two million (literally!) possibilities.

The MLA has a long history, all the way back to 1883, and a broad influence, with more than 30,000 members around the world (www.wikipedia.org).

More information:

• Gibaldi: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers §6
• Hacker: Rules for Writers §55
• Hacker and Sommers: A Writer's Reference §MLA