Use direct quotes sparingly. The more your own voice comes through, the more readable your paper will be. Most facts and information can be paraphrased or summarized. Reserve direct quotes for moments when:
You’re citing a notable person
The wording is especially forceful, profound, poetic, or memorable
The exact phrasing is essential to your point
Even though it is essential to acknowledge the use of another’s words and/or ideas in your work, it is also important to keep your paper as “readable” as possible. The MLA Handbook suggests writers keep the number of parenthetical references “as brief – and as few— as clarity and accuracy permit.” They urge writers to provide only the information a reader needs to identify the sources, namely the author (or title if there is no listed author) and the page number. MLA also encourages writers to use an author’s name in the text in order to shorten the parenthetical notation.
In-text citations are brief references within your paper that:
Show your reader you’ve used an outside source, and
Point them to the matching entry in your Works Cited list.
They may also indicate the exact location in the source (e.g., a page number).
In-text citations can appear directly in your sentence, in parentheses, or as a combination of both. You must cite all direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries.
An in-text citation begins with the first piece of information from the Works Cited entry: usually the author’s last name or, if no author is listed, the title of the work.
With author: (Jones 14)
With no author: ("Global Warming" 129)
If page numbers are available, they must be included. (Check the PDF version of database articles to find them.)
Before punctuation: Most parenthetical references go before the period.
Example: Magnesium can be effective in treating PMS (Haggerty 42).
Block quotes: Direct quotes longer than 4 lines are indented ½ inch, quotation marks removed, and the citation goes after the punctuation.
Example:
A preliminary study presented recently at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting found that getting enough sleep was associated with greater protection of death from all causes. If magnesium does work to help someone get a little shuteye, that may be because it is acting on certain receptors on the surface of brain cells to quiet down brain cell activity. The nutrient acts on the benzodiazepine receptor, which is the same receptor used by Valium-type drugs and the sleep medication Ambien. (Gurubhagavatula 546)
Author already named: If the author’s name appears in your sentence, do not repeat it in parentheses.
Example: Haggerty notes magnesium is effective at relieving PMS (42).
Cite all outside sources you use in your research paper. Citing is required for sources you quote word-for-word, for sources you paraphrase (rewrite using your own words), and for sources from which you summarize the main ideas within your work.
The quote below appears exactly as it does in Joanna Santa Barbara's article on child-rearing in the Encyclopedia of Violence Peace and Conflict.
"Adjusted data from seven U.S. surveys between 1968 and 1994 show a decline in approval of discliplinary spanking from 94% to 68%, or 26 percentage points in 26 years" (Santa Barbara 243).
This sentence takes the information above and puts it into the author’s own words.
Studies show that Americans are becoming more critical of the concept of spanking children. Between 1968 and 1994 the so-called “approval rating” of spanking children dropped from 94% to 68% (Santa Barbara 243).
The sentence below distills the main idea of the original information.
Studies have shown that Americans just don't approve of spanking like they used to (Santa Barbara 243).
You don’t need to cite:
Your own ideas and conclusions
Common knowledge — facts widely known and easily verified (e.g., Abraham Lincoln was president during the Civil War; World War II ended in 1945)
Sayings and proverbs — expressions like "The grass is always greener" or "The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach"