Why are in-text citations important? How is this going to help me?

Just as important as it is to create citations to track the important work of other authors/creators who contribute to your report, research paper, project, or assignment, it is also critical that you create visual cues in the text of your work that lets your reader know that you are referencing or quoting someone else and that these are not your words. This is one of the critical pieces in understanding plagiarism and how to ethically and responsibly use information in your student work, as well as your work life.

Parentheses by tian2992

What is an in-text citation?

A MLA formatted in-text (or parenthetical) citation is a brief flag (or visual cue) that lets your reader know they will find a fuller citation in your Works Cited page. The in-text citation can include the author(s) and a page number (if you are using a direct quote and if page numbers are available). Web pages do not have page numbers, so you can either not include a page number at all or review the MLA guidelines for how to come up with other methods to identify content specifically on a web page.

What is the formula for creating in-text citations?

The in-text citations will include the author(s) of the source you are citing and a page number only if you are including a direct quote and if page number(s) are available (for example, websites typically don't have page numbers). Again, I will encourage you to check out the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, as they are an excellent resource for answering any questions about formatting in-text citations, including lots of information about rules to follow when using one author, more than one author, if you have already introduced the author, etc. Purdue OWL provides critical information and resources on how to create in-text citations using both MLA and APA formats. It would be impossible to include all of the different formulas and rules for in-text citations, so you are encouraged to use the MLA section of the Purdue University Online Writing Lab as your guide when you have questions about how to create in-text citations. Also keep in mind that reference management tools can help you create an appropriately MLA-formatted in-text citation.

What does a MLA-formatted in-text citation look like?

In-text citations (bolded for emphasis) could look like any of the following:

When introducing an author and including a direct quote:

In his book An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warns, "global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us" (10).

When including a direct quote (without introduction of the author):

Scientific research on the impact of global warming abounds and climate variability has recently received much-needed attention, providing opportunities to "probe causes of the climate variability simulated by coupled climate models that can reproduce reliable long-term climate variations" (Liu et al. 1064).

When summarizing or paraphrasing the work of the author:

There are four types of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases (US Environmental Protection Agency).

Based on these in-text citations your reader would see the following Works Cited page at the end of your paper or project:

Works Cited

Gore, Albert. An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do about It. Emmaus, Pa: Rodale Press, 2006. Print.

Liu, Jian et al. “What Drives the Global Summer Monsoon over the Past Millennium?” Climate Dynamics 39.5 (2012): 1063–1072. EBSCOhost. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

US Environmental Protection Agency. “Overview of Greenhouse Gases.” Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Overviews & Factsheets. N. p., 9 Sept. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

It is important to remember that your in-text citations should come at the end of the sentence and before the punctuation. For example, "__________" (Author page number). See how the period is placed on the outside of the parentheses? Do that.

If you are referencing two different sources in one sentence separate the author with a semicolon (;). The examples provided above have the in-text (or parenthetical) citations bolded to show you what they look like as part of a sentence in student work; in your own paper you would not bold your in-text citations.

Are you citing a work with more than one author? Refer to the MLA rules on the Purdue OWL website for how to create in-text citations when you have multiple authors for a source. Check the section MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics.

Diana Hacker also has suggestions for integrating sources into your paper and using your quotations appropriately. It is important to use signal phrases when integrating sources into your work by marking boundaries, establishing authority, introducing summaries and paraphrases, putting direct quotes in context, and integrating statistics and other facts (364-369).

Works Cited

Hacker, Diana. A Writer’s Reference. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print.

tian2992. Parentheses. N. p., 2013. Flickr. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.