English 11H & 12CP

Mrs. A. Miller

The MLA Handbook requires an in-text parenthetical reference system (as opposed to footnotes or endnotes) to document the sources used in a paper. These parenthetical references contain abbreviated source information since they are tied to an alphabetical list of Works Cited which contains full source information and appears at the end of the paper. When constructing these in-text references, remember that all in-text parenthetical references must correspond to a source cited in the Works Cited list, and that the function of the parenthetical reference is to give the reader information

that allows him or her to quickly locate the source in that list.

They are found “internally” or inside your essay.

They are found within parenthesis!

Mrs. Miller

Author’s last name and page number(s) of quote must appear in the text

Romantic poetry is characterized by the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth 263).

Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (263).

Purdue University Writing Lab

Imagine writing a paper on the future of the Chesapeake Bay in which you quote a newspaper editorial. The sentence in your paper might look like this:

Editorialists have noted that despite "20 years of political

posturing and photo-ops," there has been no discernible

improvement to the bay's water quality (Morse B8).

And the corresponding Works Cited entry would look like this:

Morse, Gordon C. "Blather Won't Bring Back the Bay.“

Washington Post 13 July 2003: B8. Print.

The MLA Handbook instructs you to keep parenthetical references "as brief—and as few—as clarity and accuracy permit." In other words, readers need enough information to locate your source on the list of Works Cited. If, for example, you identify the author's name in the sentence, you can omit it from the parenthetical citation:

Gordon Morse from The Washington Post notes that despite "20 years of political posturing and photo-ops, “there has been no discernible improvement to the bay's water quality (B8).

Author's last name followed by a space and a page reference. If the author's name is mentioned in the sentence, the page number alone is required:

(Smith 139)

Use the author's last name alone. If no author's name is available, use the name of the source:

(Smith)

When the author's name is not available, use the name of the source (in italics or quotation marks, as necessary). You can shorten this title to its first few words:

("Chesapeake: Still At Bay")

In this case, the reader will need further identifying information to differentiate between the sources in the Works Cited page. Use the author's last name followed by a comma and the title of the work before the page reference:

(Morse, "Blather Won't" B8)

Give the last name and first initial (or full name if they have the same first initial):

(M. Lucas 314)

Give the last name of each person listed for two or three authors:

(Lippson and Lippson 43)

(Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe 133)

Use the first author's last name followed by the words "et al.” which is Latin and means “and

others.” What you do in the parenthetical citation should match your Works Cited entry:

(Smith, et al.)

If your source quotes someone else, you would list the original speaker of the quote and then the author of the work you found the quote in.

Use “qtd. in” between the names:

(Johnson qtd. in Boswell 450)

If your source is part of set of books, list the volume number first and then the page number. Separate the two with a colon:

(Medical Journal 10:336)

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter and verse. For example:

Ezekiel saw "what seemed to be four living creatures," each with faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle (New Jerusalem Bible, Ezek.

1.5-10).

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation.

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

. . . as has been discussed elsewhere (Burke 3;

Dewey 21).

Include in the text or the citation the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name).

You do not need to give page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.

Do not include URLs. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like CNN.com or Forbes.com.

If the source is only one page in length or is a web page with no apparent pagination:

Source: Dave Poland’s “Hot Button” web column

(Poland)

If the author is unknown, use the title of the article for the citation:

(“Hot Button”)