In-Text Citation Basics
When you use outside sources in your writing, you must credit them within your essay—not just in the Works Cited list at the end. These in-text citations tell your reader what source you’re using, where you used it, and (if available) what page the information appears on.
Standard MLA in-text citations include:
- The author’s last name
- The page number (if available)
These two elements usually appear in parentheses at the end of the sentence.
The crowd at the fight erupted “with a sound like the sea” when Joe Louis won (Angelou 94).
What if my source doesn’t have an author?
Use a shortened version of the title (in quotation marks), and cite it as you would an author name.
("Drone Warfare" 105).
What if there are multiple authors?
Sources with two authors: Include both last names, joined by "and"
(Dixon and Rivoche 276).
Sources with three or more authors: Use the first author’s last name followed by et al.
(Plaw et al. 51).
Note: Et al. is always followed by a period—even when it appears in the middle of a citation.
What if my source doesn’t have page numbers?
If your source doesn’t include page numbers—like many web articles, videos, or digital publications—just omit the number. Don’t make one up, and don’t try to count paragraphs or screen scrolls; your citation is perfectly valid without a page number.
(Mendez).
Readability
Although 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. MLA recommends keeping the number of parenthetical references “as brief—and as few—as clarity and accuracy permit.”
Use Signal Phrases
Signal phrases help you introduce the source clearly and allow you to shorten the citation in parentheses.
In "Disability," Nancy Mairs rejects the idea that she should be an object of pity: "I am not a disease. I am a person" (13).
Vary Your Signal Phrases
Keep your writing varied by switching up your signal phrases. Here are some examples:
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Mairs notes...
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Mairs states...
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Mairs points out...
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Mairs argues...
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Mairs observes...
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According to Mairs...
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Mairs explains....
Using a Single Source Repeatedly in a Paragraph
If you are using the same source several times in a single paragraph, you don’t need to cite the author’s name again and again. Some strategies include:
- Mentioning the author at the start and including page numbers as needed
Moreham notes that drone cameras “can look over fences and walls, fly past 10th-storey windows, and follow people into remote, formerly inaccessible public spaces” (253). She later explains that the reasonable expectation of privacy test “needs to be a normative enquiry, not a purely factual one” (257).
- Citing the source once at the end of the paragraph (if it's clear all the information comes from that source)
Brad Manning recalls a childhood of competing with his father in physical strength. Even as he aged, their relationship continued to be defined by these playful contests (120-121).
Special Cases
Block Quotes
If a direct quote runs more than four typed lines in your MLA-formatted paper, it receives special formatting:
- Start the quote on a new line
- Indent the entire quote one inch from the left
- Do not use quotation marks
- Place the parenthetical citation after the final punctuation
In "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson presents the town’s ritual as oddly casual, masking is violent purpose:
The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. (34)
Indirect Quotes
If your source quotes someone else—and you want to use that quote—mention the original speaker and cite the source you actually read using qtd.in (quoted in).
Norman Podhoretz candidly admits that, as a boy, he absorbed racial biases from his environment that left him wary of Black men (qtd. in Staples 141).
