In-text Citation - MLA Quick Citation Guide - Library.

MLA Citation Style In-Text Citation Introduction When you cite your sources in the text of your writing project (what’s often called in-text citation), you need to give just enough information so that people can trace the quotation or image back to its source.

Academic writing citation formats (MLA, APA, Chicago and Harvard) are needed when doing in-text citations of quotes and literature paraphrased for other sources of information. However, this becomes tricky when it comes to how to cite a song in text. For instance, MLA and APA require pages numbers which are never found in songs.

How to write in-text citations (MLA format) Answer the questions on the right to see how to correctly set out your in-text citations. View a video explanation of in-text citations and how to use this web page.

Here is the standard correct in-text citation style according to MLA guidelines: “Quotation” (Author’s Last Name Page Number). Take a moment to carefully consider the placement of the parts and punctuation of this in-text citation.

To cite this type of reference in the text, you should use what is known as a parenthetical —the citation information enclosed in parentheses—at the end of the relevant sentence. The parenthetical should include simply the author’s last name (with no first or middle initial).

The following are examples of how to cite a journal in MLA 8, both in text and as a full reference in the Works Cited. These were all found via a database. Note that “Date Accessed” is the day that the journal article was found and read. Including this date is optional.

This means that the author’s last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text as a parenthetical citation, and a complete corresponding reference should appear in your works cited list.

General rules: MLA features parenthetical in-text citations and a corresponding alphabetical works-cited list at the end of the document. The brief in-text citation leads unambiguously to a specific entry with full details in the works-cited list, and to a passage in the source.

The web page “Formatting a Research Paper” gives two options when it comes to creating the header for your project: An MLA format heading can be placed at the top of the first page, or, A title page can grace the front of the assignment.

As you can see from these two examples, MLA in-text citations follow an author-page style, meaning you put the author’s name first, then the page number. There are no commas or other punctuation in the parenthetical reference when you have an author and page number.

In-text Citations In-text citations include the author and page number of the source in parentheses, called a parenthetical citation.

By employing MLA citation style, you will give proper credit to authors whose ideas or words you are using in your own work. In a research paper, you will use two types of MLA citation. In-text citations are brief and will appear among the sentences you write in your paper.