Doing in-text citations proves that you have found the information and comprehended the reading. You are now using that information to help prove your thesis. To take information from a source and place it in your essay, we must first understand that there are different ways of stylizing an essay. There are 3 main types of styles:
For the purposes of this webquest, I will be using the MLA citation style. For more information on the other styles, the American University library website provides a great overview of each style with helpful links.
Back to the Mothman essay. From the West Virginia Culture website I found earlier, I'm going to use the newspaper article arguing that the Mothman was actually a Sandhill Crane. The following is a quote from the article I want to use in my essay:
Dr. Robert L. Smith, associate professor of wildlife biology in WVU's division of forestry, told Mason Sheriff [...] he believes the "thing" which has been frightening people in the Point Pleasant area since Tuesday is a large bird which stopped off while migrating south.
To use this quote, I have to have the person or organization that provided this quote along with the page number of where the information was found. For this source, the author is Ralph Turner, yet there is no page number. So, to use this in an essay in MLA format, I would simply put Ralph's last name at the end of the quote in parenthesis without the page number. So, the in-text citation would read:
A voice of doubt over the existence of the Mothman was stated in the Herald-Dispatch on November 19, 1966. One Dr. Robert L. Smith stated that the "'thing' which has been frightening people in the Point Pleasant area since Tuesday is a large bird which stopped off while migrating south" (Turner).
Notice I stopped the quotes before the parenthesis, since that was all that was stated, and the end of the sentence (in this case, the period) goes after the parenthesis. This shows that the contents of the parenthesis belong with the quoted information and not with the next sentence. The reason for using the author's last name is so readers may quickly locate the source on my Works Cited page at the end of my essay.
To properly use in-text citation is just one way of avoiding plagiarism. Plagiarism will be discussed in the final section in more detail. For more information on in-text citations, select the following link. To be tested on this section, select the "Gathering Quiz" button below.