Introduction

Now that you know about how to include quotes and paraphrases into your essay, let’s learn about the technical rules, aka citations, in order to give credit to the sources you’re using.

Why Should I Cite?

Citing identifies and credits sources used in a research paper or project, acknowledging their role in shaping your research. This also allows others to follow-up on or retrieve this material.

Summary, Paraphrase, Quote

In any of these cases, you must credit your source

• Quotations can be direct (using quotation marks) or indirect (no quotation marks and often introduced by ‘that’)

  • A noted scientist states, “A hundred years ago, the average temperature of the earth was about 13.7°C (56.5°F); today, it is closer to 14.4°C (57.9°F)” (Silver 11).

• A paraphrase is a restatement of the text of your source in your own words

  • A noted scientist observes that the earth’s current average temperature is 57.9°F compared to 56.5°F a hundred years ago (Silver 11).

• A summary (aka "abstract") briefly captures the main ideas of your source

How Do I Cite?

There are two parts to citing according to MLA style:

1. Brief In-text citations (in parentheses) within the body of your essay or paper

2. List of full citations in the Works Cited page at the end of your paper

Note:

• References cited in the text must appear in the Works Cited.

• Conversely, each entry in the Works Cited must be cited in the text.

Different Types of Citations

There are two types of citations that need to be used when documenting your sources:

1. In-text citations are “references in the text...[that] clearly point to specific sources in the list of works cited” (Gibaldi 214). These are located within the body of your paper.

2. Works Cited page citations “identify the location of the borrowed information as specifically as possible” (Gibaldi 215). These are located after your paper in a bibliographic list.

Here is a quick guide for MLA citation rules, but read further to understand them deeper and find more detailed guides that will help with your possible nuanced situations.

In-Text Citations

You must provide information that will allow the reader to locate exactly where you found information in your sources. Usually this is the author's last name and a page number, for example: (Polar 188)

Standard Uses

Place the parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence before the punctuation mark.

• The average world temperature is rising at an alarming rate of 200 degrees Celsius per year (Polar 188).

If you use an author's name in a sentence (known as a “signal phrase”), do not use it again in the parenthetical citation. Simply give the page numbers:

• Polar argues that global warming will help heat our jacuzzis (122).

Other Citation Possibilities:

If there is no known author, use the title and page number in your citation:

• A single car trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco produces more pollution than a tree does in its entire lifetime (Save My Greenhouse 47).

If the borrowed information spans more than one page continuously, add a dash between the starting and ending page numbers. When possible, provide only the last two digits of the second number if the first digit is the same:

• Smith states some interesting facts about the changing world temperature (123-25).

If your borrowed information comes from two different, non-consecutive pages, use a comma in between the page numbers:

• Jones alludes to this premise (123-39, 145).

If there are two or more works cited with your borrowed information, add a semicolon in between the citations:

• (Taylor 54; Thomas 327)

If you cite more than one work by the same author in your paper, indicate which source it is in your parenthetical citation:

• Everyone hates global warming (Smith, Our Environment 87).

• Global warming is causing unusual weather activities (Smith, The Reality of Climate Change 105).

Titles: Italics or Quotation Marks?

Whether you are referencing a title of a source within your essay or the works cited page, you have to punctuate it by either putting it in italics or quotation marks.

Italics and quotation marks are used for titles of books, plays, and other works of art.

Italics and quotation marks are used to set the title apart from the text surrounding it.

• For example, if you were writing a sentence that explained “I watched the famous episode from Seinfeld called The Puffy Shirt,” it wouldn't necessarily be clear exactly what the titles were, or even that there was a title at all. It should read liked:

• I watched the famous episode from Seinfeld called “The Puffy Shirt.”

Below are lists of how to punctuate different types of titles:

Formatting a Works Cited Page

The following are videos that were included in the MLA Formatting lesson, but let's review for the sake of step-by-step help with formatting a Works Cited page.

Additional Help

Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) is the most detailed source for MLA formatting (also APA and Chicago). Here's their help with citations.