MLA Citations

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In a term paper, the exact sources of all research information must be identified, even though most of it is summarized in your own words. One method of identifying sources involves the use of citations that appear in parentheses in the text of your essay, immediately following a passage of research information. The same system is used to specify the source of direct quotations.

The MLA Handbook now recommends use of these simple in-text citations instead of footnotes. (Be sure to check your teacher's instructions to see whether parenthetic citations or footnotes are required.)

• The most common form of citation gives the author's last name followed immediately by page number(s):

• If you have mentioned the author's name in your essay, fairly close to the citation, give page number(s) only:

• If there are two or three authors, list their last names :

• If there are more than three authors, you may use the Latin abbreviation et al. ("and others") following the first author's name:

• Internet items and certain other sources have no page numbers. If an author's name is given, use that; often, an organization or Internet site's name must be cited instead.

• In other cases, when no author is named (e.g. an anonymous Internet item, an unsigned encyclopedia article), you may use a title or heading, or else a key word from it.

NOTE: In unusual cases, common sense should determine what to use in a citation. Choose the name, word or phrase that will allow the reader to easily identify the source in your list of Works Cited. (As a rule, whatever comes first in the bibliography entry forms the basis of the citation.) Keep citations brief and simple.

POETRY AND DRAMA

• When quoting from a poem, if the poet and title are already identified in the essay, you may use citation format to give the line numbers only: (12-14)
• When quoting from a play, if the playwright and title are identified in the essay, citation format may be used to indicate act, scene, and lines:

Placement and Punctuation of MLA Citations

When a segment of research information is summarized in your own words, the citation follows it immediately. It comes before the closing punctuation as shown below:

The loss of the Franklin Expedition was largely due to the failure of the English explorers to adapt to the severe northern conditions and to provision their ships properly for the long Arctic winters (Parker 54-55).

Following a brief direct quotation, the citation is placed after the closing quotation marks but before the closing punctuation:

The expedition was "doomed from the start by the cavalier attitudes characteristic of the British navy in Franklin's time" (Singh and Johnson 77).

Long quotations are set off from the text of your essay, with the entire passage indented. (Quotation marks are not needed.) In this case, the citation follows the closing punctuation:

Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism. Societies throughout the world must learn from this tragic example. (Kangi 45)

Source: Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 5th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1999.