MLA Citation in Text
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MLA format used what is called "parenthetical citation."  This means that the citation information that appears in the body of your text is contained inside parentheses.  For this citation information, you will of course need to know the author(s) and the page number(s) of the work(s) you are citing, so you will have wanted to take of these things as you were doing your research.

Depending on whether you're referring to an entire work or quoting/paraphrasing a section from a specific work, MLA requires different information.  MLA prefers that you cite the authors name and as much of the information as possible (without sounding awkward) in your sentence and that the only information in the parentheses be the page number(s).  However, this doesn't always sound right, depending on the way you structure your sentence, so it is wise to be aware of all the ways to cite things in text.

Let's take a look at the ways one could go about referring to an entire work in his/her text.1
 

EXAMPLE:

    Ward Churchill questions this perspective of Native American policy in his book Since Predator Came. (Preferred Manner)

    Not everyone accepts the government's official explanation for the nations Native American policy (Churchill 1995). (Ok but not suggested)
 

Now let's take a look at how one would integrate citation information with a quotation.  For more examples, go HERE, or check your reference manual.
 

EXAMPLE:

    Deborah Tannen suggests that "men as doctors can choose whether or not they wish to adopt an authoritarian or even imperious style without suffering a loss of service from nurses, but women doctors cannot" (124). 

OR 

    Perhaps it is true that "men as doctors can choose whether or not they wish to adopt an authoritarian or even imperious style without suffering a loss of service from nurses, but women doctors cannot" (Tannen 124).

If you are referring to or quoting from more than one work in a sentence, you have to make sure to cite both of them in the parenthetical statement.  Also if you will refer to more than one work by the same author at some point in your paper (say you had two articles by Tannen and you were going to quote each of them eventually), you'd have to note in the parenthetical statement which work you were referring to along with the author's name and the page number.  So it would look something like this:
 

 As So-and-So said, "Yadda yadda yadda" (Title Page). 
OR 
Blah blah, "Yadda yadda yadda" (Last Name, Title Page). 

(italicize/underline the title if it is a book.  Use quotation marks if it is the title of a article, chapter, essay, or anything published within a larger work)

 


1. To see the works cited on this page, go HERE.
 
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