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Writing Styles: MLA: In-text Citations

Basic APA, Chicago Style and MLA documentation.

In-Text Citations for MLA

Information needed:

  • Last name of each author
  • Page number(s) or other appropriate location designations (numbered paragraphs, chapters, lines of poetry, and acts.scenes.lines in plays)
  • Title if citing multiple works by same author

Direct Quote, Author(s) Introduced In-text:

Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, both end-of-life nurses, paint terminal illness as "not unlike a still pond disturbed by a falling stone; an impending death sends ripples through all the relationships in the life of the dying" (2).

Paraphrased Without Author(s) In-text:

Final illness touches everyone in the patient's realm just as a pebble plunked into a quiet pond creates growing concentric waves, rolling over all in the way (Callanan and Kelley 2).

Paraphrased With Author(s) Introduced In-text:

Callanan and Kelley claim final illness touches every one in the patient's realm just a s a pebble plunked into a quiet pond creates growing concentric waves, rolling over all in the way (2).

Same Author's Multiple Works Referenced Throughout Document:

  • "To be, or not to be, that is the question" (Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.1.55).
  • "Men at some time are masters of their fates; / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves" (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.2.139-141).

More Than 3 Authors:

  • Type the last name of the first author listed, followed by the Latin expression "et al." (means "and all the others") plus the page number.
  • Ex: Source by Caban, Hamilton, Ellis, and Feemster becomes (Caban et al. 163).

"Long" Quotes:

  • Definition: Poetry of 4+ lines; Prose of 5+ lines.
  • Double indent, block quote introduced by colon.
  • Eliminate quotation marks.
  • Maintain double-spacing. 
  • End period moves before parentheses.

Wroblewski's sensory details allow readers to immerse themselves in the story as if they were shadowing Edgar:

                   A breeze tousled his hair. There was no

                   lightning, no thunder, just the steady

                   whisper of warm rain, like the murmur of

                   the creek -- the sound that had once made

                   Almondine pounce on the snow-covered

                   creek as if something hid there. Silvery

                   sheets of water poured into the gutters

                   around their roof. (231)