In text Citations
The author’s last name and a page number identify the source and the specific location from which you borrowed material:
Medieval Europe was a place both of “raids, pillages, slavery, and extortion” and of “traveling merchants, monetary exchange, towns if not cities, and active markets in grain” (Townsend 10).
The parenthetical reference “(Townsend 10)” indicates that the quotations come from page 10 of a work by Townsend. Given the author’s last name, your readers can find complete publication information for the source in the alphabetically arranged list of works cited that follows the text of your paper.
Townsend, Robert M. The Medieval Village Economy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.
There is a direct relation between what you integrate into your text and what you put in parentheses. The paired sentences below show different ways to identify authors. NB – if you put the name in your text, you do not need it in the parentheses.
If you are going to summarize an entire source in your paper, you should introduce the source with an introductory tag line and end with a parenthetical citation:
| Introductory
Tag line: |
Parenthetical
citation: |
| In
a 1964 essay titled "Reposing in the Preparation
Room," author Jessica Mitford argues that . . . |
(25-29). |
| Subsequent
Tags: |
Mitford says . . . |
| Mitford goes
on to say . . . |
| Mitford concludes
. . . |
|
|
It is a good idea to include in your text the name of the person that begins the corresponding entry in the works cited list:
Paul Lauter and his co-editors have provided a useful anthology of American literature.
Gilbert and Gubar broke new ground on the subject.
Diana Rigg gave a memorable interpretation of Medea.
Margaret Atwood’s remarks drew an enthusiastic response.
Michael Joyce was among the first to write fiction in hypertext.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. “Silencing the Scream.” Boundaries of the Imagination Forum. MLA Annual Convention. Royal York Hotel, Toronto. 29 Dec. 1993. Address.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Print.
Joyce, Michael. Afternoon: A Story. 1987. Watertown: Eastgate, 1999. CD-ROM.
Lauter, Paul, et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. 5 vols. Boston: Houghton, 2006. Print.
Rigg, Diana, perf. Medea. By Euripides. Trans. Alistair Elliot. Dir. Jonathan Kent. Longacre Theatre, New York. 7 Apr. 1994. Performance.
Here are some examples of what to do if the work has an anonymous author:
The nine grades of mandarins were “distinguished by the color of the button on the hats of office” (“Mandarin”).
International espionage was as prevalent as ever in the 1990s (“Decade”).
Even Sixty Minutes launched an attack on modern art, in a segment entitled “Yes . . . but Is It Art?”
In winter the snowy owl feeds primarily on small rodents (“Snowy Owl,” Hinterland), but in spring it also feeds on the eggs of much larger waterfowl, such as geese and swans (“Snowy Owl," Arctic).
Works Cited
“Decade of the Spy.” Newsweek 7 Mar. 1994: 26-27. Print.
“Mandarin.” The Encyclopedia Americana. 1994 ed. Print.
“Snowy Owl.” Arctic Studies Center. Natl. Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Inst., 2004. Web. 8 Aug. 2007.
“Snowy Owl.” Hinterland Who’s Who. Canadian Wildlife Service, 2006. Web. 8 Aug. 2007.
“Yes . . . but Is It Art?” Narr. Morley Safer. Sixty Minutes. CBS. WCBS, New York. 19 Sept. 1993. Television
To cite a source within a source:
