Listing a source on your Works Cited page is only half the job of crediting someone else's work. The other half is a pointer in the body of your paper to the matching entry. That pointer is an in-text citation.
When to use a citation
As the lesson on what to cite explained, you give credit every time you use someone else's words or ideas. In MLA, the citation goes right where you use them, whether you quoted directly or paraphrased.
- If you quote something, put the citation right after the quote.
- If you paraphrase a source over a few sentences, cite it where a reader can tell which ideas came from it.
What an MLA in-text citation looks like
The most common MLA citation is the parenthetical citation: the author and page go inside parentheses at the end of the sentence, just before the period.
Many reported Bigfoot sightings may be black bears (Lozier et al. 1626).
The citation starts with whatever starts the matching Works Cited entry, usually the author's last name. That's what lets your reader find the entry.
The basic format
Most MLA citations include:
- The author's last name
- The page number, when the source has one
No comma between them, and no "p." before the page. With a quote, the citation comes after the closing quotation mark and before the period:
The survey “cannot refute the existence of anomalous primates, neither has it found any evidence in support” (Sykes et al. 3).
If the passage spans more than one page, use a dash, shortening the second number the same way the Works Cited page does:
(Lozier et al. 1625–26)
If the source has no page numbers, like most web pages, give the author alone:
(Lin)
If the source numbers something else, like the lines of a poem or the time stamps of a video, you can use that instead.
Two or more authors
For a source with two authors, give both last names joined by "and":
(Strange and Weber 42)
For three or more authors, use the first author's last name followed by et al.:
(Sykes et al. 3)
Don't put a comma before et al. in a citation, and don't italicize it.
No author?
If a source has no author, its Works Cited entry starts with the title, so the citation does too. Use the title, or a shortened version of it if it's long. Put it in quotation marks or italics, the same way it appears in the entry:
(“Obesity and Overweight”)
The same goes for a page written by an organization that also publishes it, like the World Health Organization page in the web page lesson. The entry starts with the title, so the citation uses the title, not the organization's name.
What if the author is already in my sentence?
If you name the author in your sentence, don't repeat the name in the parentheses. Just give the page at the end. This is called a narrative citation:
Lozier and his colleagues suspect that “many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears” (1626).
Notice the sentence says "Lozier and his colleagues," not "Lozier et al." MLA saves et al. for parentheses and Works Cited. In your own sentence, write "and colleagues," "and others," or the names themselves.
Citing two or more sources at once
If two sources support the same point, put them in one set of parentheses, separated by a semicolon:
(Lozier et al. 1626; Sykes et al. 3)
Citations on a real page
Here are three of these forms working together on page 2 of the sample Bigfoot paper.
Every hair attributed to Bigfoot matched an animal already known to science (Sykes et al.).
Sykes and his colleagues tested 30 hair samples credited to Bigfoot and similar creatures.
Lozier and his colleagues reached a similar conclusion about sightings: “we nonetheless suspect that many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears” (1626).
- ParentheticalThe authors inside the parentheses, before the period. The point sums up the whole study, so no page is needed.
- NarrativeThe authors are named in the sentence.
- A quoteThe authors are already named, so the citation holds only the page.
The short version
That's a lot, but you've made it through the toughest parts of MLA: Works Cited entries and in-text citations. The most important things to remember:
- Cite your source every time you use it, whether you quote or paraphrase
- Use the author's last name and the page, with no comma
- Make sure every citation matches the first word of a Works Cited entry
Quick checklist
- Author and page, no comma, no "p."
- Citation before the sentence's period, after any closing quotation mark
- "and" for two authors; et al. for three or more, in parentheses only
- Title in place of the author when the entry starts with the title
- Author only when the source has no page numbers
- Name in the sentence means page only in the parentheses
How PERRLA handles citations
In PERRLA, you cite as you write. Type an opening parenthesis in an MLA paper and the citation picker opens at your cursor. Pick the source, type the page, and the citation lands as (Lozier et al. 1626). A source with no author gets its title, and a source with no page numbers gets only the author.
You type(
You pickLozier, J. D., et al.
You add the page1626
Lands as(Lozier et al. 1626)
The Works Cited page updates itself from what you cite.