Subject Guides: MLA Citation Guide (9th ed.): In-text Citations

About In-text Citations

In-text citations tell a reader the minimum amount of information about any given source necessary to identify the author and location, as determined by the MLA. In-text citations are usually inserted paranthetically between round brackets, e.g. ( ). All in-text citations must have a corresponding entry in the Works Cited page.

Citing Methods
Quoting Prose
Quoting Poetry
Quoting Drama
Paraphrasing
Some Special Cases
No Author
No Page Number
Indirect Source (Source within a Quotation)
Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers

Quoting Prose

Irrespective of the genre (fiction, non-fiction, novel, short story, essay, etc.), prose quotations are formatted according to their length.

Short Prose Quotations (Four lines or fewer)
Use double quotation marks around the quoted words and integrate them into the text of your paper at the level of the sentence. Note that the period is placed after the final parentheses.

Olga Tokarczuk's Flights is written in brief, episodic riffs, some as short as the following: "On the plane between 8:45 and 9:00 a.m. To my mind, it took an hour, or even longer" (118).

"In 1927," the short story Art Work begins, "Matisse painted Le Silence habité des maisons" (Byatt 31).

Two Authors

In their article "Lacan's Psychoanalytic Rhetoric and the Power of Non-Understanding," Adleman and Vanderwees contend that "Lacan’s recondite rhetoric of psychoanalysis reverberates with a number of critical vectors of Burkean thought" (201).

Multiple Authors

Smagorinsky et al., in their article "Bullshit in Academic Writing," recount their "protocol analysis of one writer as she attempted to produce an academic essay on a topic in which her understanding of the play's content was insufficient for the task of producing the essay" (368).

Long Prose Quotations (More than four lines)
Long quotations must be formatted as a block quotation. This means the entire quotation must be left-justified and indented on a new line. Note that the quotation is double spaced without quotation marks, and that the period is placed before the page number(s).

Zadie Smith's novel On Beauty begins with a series of email exchanges between Howard Belsey and his son, Jerome. The following example is typical of Jerome's correspondence:

Dear Dr Belsey!
I have no idea how you're going to take this one! But we're in love! The Kipps girl and me! I'm going to ask her to marry me, Dad! And I think she'll say yes!!! Are you digging on these excalamation marks!!!! Her name's Victoria but everyone calls her Vee. She's amazing, gorgeous, brilliant. I'm asking her "officially" this evening, but I wanted to tell you first. It's come over us like the Song of Solomon, and there's no way to explain it apart from as a kind of mutual revelation. Seriously: I'm happy. Please take two Valium and ask Mom to mail me ASAP. I've got no credit left on this phone and don't like to use theirs.

Jxx (7)

Changes to Quotations
Use square brackets to indicate exactly where you made changes, additions, or explanations to the original text within a quotation.

In Rawi Hage's novel Cockroach, the narrator recalls how he "strolled down St-Laurent, hopping from one bar to another, hoping to meet someone drunk and generous enough to offer [him] a beer" (34).

Use ellipses (three periods with a space before and after each period) to show you have omitted material from a quotation.

In James Baldwin's searing novel Giovanni's Room, the narrator describe how, "in that room ... hours and days had no meaning" (75).

Quoting Poetry

As is true of prose quotations, quotations of poetry are formatted according to their length.

Short Poetry Quotations (3 lines or fewer)
Cite the source using the author's last name and the line number(s). Use a forward slash with a space on either side ( / ) to indicate line breaks. Mark a stanza break with two forward slashes ( // ) if the break occurs in the quotation.

In "Wager," Karen Solie's speaker describes how "The World's Largest animals, / vegetables, minerals, fade and fall over as junk / beside our beloved minor highways" (4-6).

Long Poetry Quotations (More than 3 lines)
Indent one tab from the left margin for quotations that are more than three lines in the source. The block quotation should be formatted so as to preserve the original formatting of the poetry as it appears in the source.

"Walk-In Clinic," Joshua Whitehead's poem, begins

i often think back
to this moment
a memory that only exists
through repetitive regeneration
it was in a commercial
("i think[questionmark]") (1-6)

Quoting Drama

Give the act, scene, and line number(s) in parentheses, with periods separating the various numbers.

Shakespeare’s Othello is confident, calm, and reasonable. As Roderigo and Iago prepare to fight, Othello commands them, “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them” (1.2.59).

Alternatively, you may cite the act and scene in your introductory remarks, and then add the line number(s) at the end of your quotation (or paraphrase) in parentheses.

In act 1, scene 2, Shakespeare’s Othello is confident, calm, and reasonable. As Roderigo and Iago prepare to fight, Othello commands them, “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them” (59).

Dialogue between two or more characters in a play should be formatted as a block quotation, including the speaker tags and formatting as it appears in the source.

The therapist Teá in Slave Play clearly disdains Jim to a certain extent, as exemplified by the following passive aggressive exchange.

JIM
Can I go to the restroom?

PATRICIA
Ummm ...
well.

TEÁ
Yes, JIm.
No one is keeping you in the room. (O'Harris, Act II, page 112)

Paraphrasing

Whenever possible, find the original source of the information you are citing. If this is not possible, reference the original work and the work you are using as follows:

Original, from "Walking in the City" by Michel de Certeau, excerpted in The Cultural Studies Reader, 3rd ed., edited by Simon Durang (pg. 159).
The 'city' founded by utopian and urbanistic discourse is defined by the possibility of a threefold operation.
First, the production of its own space (un espace propre): rational organization must thus repress all the physical, mental and political pollutions that would comprise it;
Second, the substitution of a nowhen, or of a synchronic system, for the indeterminable and stubborn resistances offered by traditions; univocal scientific strategies, made possible by the flattening out of all the data in a plane projection, must replace the tactics of users who take advantage of 'opportunities' and who, through these trap-events, these lapses in visibility, reproduce the opacities of history everywhere;
Third and finally, the creation of a universal and anonymous subject which is the city itself: it gradually becomes possible to attribute to it, as to its political model, Hobbe's State, all the functions and predicates that were previously scattered and assigned to many different real subjects--groups, associations, or individuals. 'The city', like a proper name, thus provides a way of conceiving and constructing space on the basis of a finite number of stable, isolatable, and interconnected properties.

Paraphrase:
In "Walking in the City," Michel de Certeau describes three operations which, in his view, characterize the city: the city imposes rational organization; the city creates a conformist landscape antagonistic to idiosyncratic behaviour and traditions; and the city assumes an impersonal, state-like identity, becoming a locus of political administration (159).

No Author

When there is no author, use a shortened version of the title of the source in your parenthetical citation. Place the shortened title in quotation marks if it is a minor work and italicize the title if it is a major work.

In the translation by Jessie L. Weston, the poem, whose author is famously unknown, begins "Since Troy's assault and siege, I trow, were over-past, / To brands and ashes burnt that stately burg at last, / And he, the traitor proved" (Sir Gawain).

No Page Number

Sources without page numbers should feature only the author name, or, where there is no author, a shortened source title, in the parenthetical citation.

In the Jul 2017 edition of The OneSheet zine features an interview with film director and producer Elijah Alvarado (OneSheet).

Indirect Source

Sometimes in your research you may want to cite a source within a source. Whenever possible, it is highly advisable to seek out the cited material in its original location and cite from there yourself. When this is not possible, format your parenthetical citation with the prefix qtd. in to indicate the secondhand nature of your citation.

Susan Harris called Yeats' play The Land of Heart's Desire "unambiguously queer-positive and feminist" (qtd. in Balázs, 17).

Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers

For in-text citations of Indigenous elders and knowledge keepers, MacEwan Library follows NorQuest Library and the expert guidance of Lorisia MacLeod, who developed their style in the spirit of wahkôhtowin and reconciliation. Guidelines for formatting a corresponding Works Cited entry can be found here.

Unlike most other personal communications, Elders and Knowledge Keepers should be cited in-text and in the reference list. The in-text citation format should be formatted as:

Delores Cardinal described the nature of the...
OR
The nature of the place was... (Cardinal).

Note: If you would like to approach an Elder or Knowledge Keeper for teachings, remember to follow protocol or if you are unsure what their protocol is, please ask them ahead of time.