Basic in-text citation rules
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.
General Guidelines
The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1.) upon the source
medium (e.g. Print, Web, DVD) and (2.) upon the sources entry on the Works Cited
(bibliography) page.
Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on
the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your
readers in the text, must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the
corresponding entry in the Works Cited List.
Citing non-print or sources from the Internet
With more and more scholarly work being posted on the Internet, you may have to cite research you
have completed in virtual environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for
scholarly work (reference the OWL's Evaluating Sources of Informationresource), some Web sources
are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet
sources, remember that your citation must reference the source in your Works Cited.
Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources
because of the absence of page numbers, but often, these sorts of entries do not require any sort of
parenthetical citation at all. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:
Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the
citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
You do not need to give paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browsers
print preview function.
Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the
appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the
name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like [Link] or [Link] as
opposed to writing out [Link] or [Link]
If you have further questions about in text citations go to the
purdue online writing lab (Purdue OWL) for more information.
There are three different ways you can incorporate evidence into your writing and use
in-text citations:
1. Use the authors name in the sentence -
Cohen lauds the Review article as, ...an astonishing blend of narrative journalism, legal
research, and gumshoe detective work.
2. Direct quote with parenthetical citation -
The review article, ...ought to end all reasonable debate in this country about whether
an innocent man or woman has yet been executed in America (Cohen).
3. Paraphrasing -
The number of Americans who favor using the death penalty has dropped nearly 20% in
the new millenium (Attitudes toward Death Penalty).
If you are quoting a person in an article other than the author, you still need an in-text
citation. See example below:
Maurice Possley, Chicago Tribune reporter, recalls the case as, ...a colossal, global
failure of every corner of the criminal justice system(Cohen).
Use evidence from the excerpt below in one of the ways discussed above:
Possley says the new piece "takes a giant step beyond our reporting because
it's such a comprehensive and detailed account" of the DeLuna case. And why
wouldn't it be? It was Liebman who first came to Possley and Mills, in
November 2005, to see if the two veteran journalists couldn't independently
investigate what his own team had discovered about the two Carloses. The
resultant series became a finalist that year for a Pulitzer Prize in National
Reporting. Someone was shouting from the rooftops, Justice Scalia.