In your paper, when you quote directly from a source, or when you paraphrase someone else’s idea, you need to give readers information about that source so that the author gets credit for their words and ideas. The way to tell readers about the source you are quoting or paraphrasing is to include an in-text citation.
The following sections explain how to format an MLA in-text citation, depending on the type of source being cited.
Source by a Single Author
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). If you’re citing a direct quote, you also need to include the page number. For example:
Social representations theory posits that reified scientific knowledge that exists at the boundaries of a given society will be interpreted in meaningful and often simplified forms by the majority (Pauling 113).
Social representations theory “proposes a new hypothesis …” (Pauling 113).
If you choose, you can integrate the author’s name into the sentence itself—this is known as a ” signal phrase “—and provide just the page number in parentheses:
Pauling (113) posits that “scientific knowledge…”
Source by Two Authors
Authors should be presented in the order in which they are listed on the published article. If you include the authors’ names in the parenthetical, use the word “and” between the two names. For example:
Social representations theory posits that reified scientific knowledge that exists at the boundaries of a given society will be interpreted in meaningful and often simplified forms by the majority (Pauling and Liu 113).
Using a signal phrase:
Pauling and Liu (113) posit that…
Source by Three or More Authors
For an article with three or more authors, to save space and to make your paper easier to read, you should use only the first author’s last name followed by “et al.”, and then the page number, if applicable (“et al.” is short for “et alia,” which means “and other people” in Latin—much like “etc.” is short for “et cetera,” which means “and other things” in Latin.):
(Pauling et al. 113)
Using a signal phrase:
Pauling et al. (113) posit…
Source by No Known Author
For an article with no known author, use the source title in place of the author’s name, formatted as it would be (i.e., italicized or enclosed in quotation marks) in your Works Cited section:
(“Bilingual Minds, Bilingual Bodies” 4)
Using a signal phrase:
The article “Bilingual Minds, Bilingual Bodies” (4) claims…
Multiple Publications by Different Authors
If you need to cite multiple publications by different authors in the same sentence, you should list the multiple sources in alphabetical order by author and use a semicolon to separate them.
… majority (Alford 24; Pauling 113; Sirkis 96).
Multiple Publications by the Same Author
If an author has multiple publications that you want to cite in the same sentence, include the author’s name in a signal phrase and the titles of the referenced sources instead in the parentheticals:
Achenbach’s recent research (“Bibliography of Published Studies” 17) demonstrates a radical shift in thinking from his stance of a decade ago (“School-Age Assessments” 39)…
Source Without Page Numbers
If you need to cite a source without page numbers, include other location information if it that information is consistently available to all users. For example, if you’re citing an ebook without page numbers, include a comma followed by the chapter number instead:
(Pauling and Liu, ch. 6)
Using a signal phrase:
Pauling and Liu (ch. 6) posit that…
Summary Points
- An MLA in-text citation is where you tell the reader, within the text of your paper, which source you are citing.
- The correct formatting for an in-text citation varies depending on how many authors created the work being cited.
- Formatting also varies depending on whether you cite the same source more than once, whether you cite multiple works by the same author, and whether you cite sources with page numbers.
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