MLA: In-Text Citations

What is an In-Text Citation?

Note: this focuses on formatting the in-text citation. For more about quoting in general, please see our Quoting page.

MLA Citations are divided into two groups: in-text citations and entries on the Works Cited page. In-text citations document where information used in the essay was found and provide credit to the authors for using their words. They also refer readers to the Works Cited page where more information can be found.

Spanish Explanation

The Purdue OWL has a Spanish language explanation available.

What's Needed?

• Author or Organization Name. Always tell your readers whose words are being used.

• Page number, if provided. If available, use the page number where the quote appeared.

Placement and Punctuation Rules

Put all MLA in-text citations close to the quotation or information that should be documented. There are several ways to do this, depending on how the information is located.

• At the end of a sentence before the final punctuation:

  • • • • • Wayland Hand reports on a folk belief that going to sleep on a rug made of bearskin can relieve backache (183). Note: the period is placed after the parenthesis.

• After the part of the sentence to which the citation applies:

• • • • • The folk belief that “sleeping on a bear rug will cure backache” (Hand 183) illustrates the magic of external objects producing results inside the body.

• At the end of a long quotation set off as a block, after the end punctuation with a space before the parentheses (block quotes appear as 4 lines or longer in your paper):

• • • • • Many baseball players are superstitious, especially pitchers. Some pitchers refuse to walk anywhere on the day of the game in the belief that every little exertion subtracts from their playing strength. One pitcher would never put on his cap until the game started and would not wear it at all on the days he did not pitch. (Gmelch 280)

Note: If a long, block quotation such as this is used, the period is placed in front of the parenthesis that begins the citation, not after.

Examples and Guidance

Author’s Name

Either give the author's name before or after the quote. We recommend before.

1. 1. • In parentheses:When people marry now “there is an important sense in which they don’t know what they are doing” (Giddens 46).

      • In text: Giddens claims that when people marry now, “there is an important sense in which they do not know what they are doing” (46).

Electronic Sources without page numbers

If paragraphs are numbered, one can use them to cite (par). In a video, you might also use a timestamp.

1. 1. • He summarizes current research on adolescent behavior (Boynton par 2).

      • He summarizes current research on adolescent behavior (Boynton 1:04).

General Reference

A general reference refers to a source as a whole, to its main ideas, or to information throughout; it needs no page number.

1. 1. • In parentheses: Many species of animals have complex systems of communication (Bright).

      • In text: As Michael Bright observes, many species of animals have complex systems of communication.

Specific Reference

A specific reference documents words, ideas or facts from a particular place in a source, such as the page for a quotation or paraphrase.

1. 1. • Quotation: Dolphins can perceive clicking sounds “made up of 700 units of sound per second” (Bright 52).

      • Paraphrase: Bright reports that dolphins recognize patterns consisting of 700 clicks each second (52).

Two Authors

Last names needed only.

1. 1. • The item is noted in a partial list of Francis Bacon’s debts from 1603 on (Jardine and Stewart 275).

Three or More Authors

Within parentheses, name the first author and add the phrase et al (a Latin term that means “and others”). Within discussion and text, try a phrase like “Chen and his colleagues point out…” or something similar.

1. 1. • More funding would encourage creative research on complementary medicine (Chen et al. 82).

Corporate or Group Author

Name the organization as author in the text or the citation, but feel free to shorten a long name.

1. 1. • The consortium gathers journalists at “a critical moment” (Comm. of Concerned Journalists 187).

No Author Given

Use the title instead.

1. 1. • In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic ("Time to Rise" 67).

More Than One Work by the Same Author

When the list of works cited includes more than one work by an author, add a shortened form of the title to your citation.

1. 1. • One writer claims that “quaintness glorifies the unassuming industriousness” in these social classes (Harris, Cute 46).

Indirect Source (Source Quoted in Another Source)

Use qtd. in (“quoted in”) to indicate when your source provides you with a quotation (or paraphrase) taken from yet another source. Here, Feuch is the source of the quotation from Vitz.

1. 1. • For Vitz, “art, especially great art, must engage all or almost all of the major capacities of the nervous system” (qtd. in Feuch 65).

Multivolume Work

To cite a whole volume, add a comma after the author’s name and vol. before the number (Cao, Vol. 4). To specify one of several volumes that you cite, add volume and page numbers (Cao 4:177).

1. 1. • In 1888, Lewis Carroll let two students call their school paper "Jabberwock", a made-up word from his own stories (Cohen 2: 695).

Literary Work

After the page number in your edition, add the chapter (ch.), part (pt.), or section (sec.) number to help readers find the passage in any edition.

1. 1. • In his book, Mark Twain ridicules an actor who “would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan” (178; ch. 21).

      • Identify a part as in (386; pt. 3, ch. 2) or, for a play, the act, scene and line numbers, as in (Ham. 1.2.76).

      • For poems, give line numbers (lines 55-57) or (55-57) after the first case; if needed, give both part and line numbers (4.220-23).

Bible

Place a period between the chapter and verse numbers (Mark 2.3-4). In parenthetical citations, abbreviate names with five or more letters, as in the case of Deuteronomy (Deut. 16.21-22).

Two or More Sources in a Citation

Separate sources within a citation with a semicolon.

1. 1. • Differences in the ways men and women use language can often be traced to who has power (Tanner 83-86; Tavris 97-301).

Work in an Anthology

For a story, poem, or other work in an anthology, cite the work’s author (not the anthology’s editor), but give page numbers in the anthology.

1. 1. • According to Corry, the battle for Internet censorship has crossed party lines (112).