Parenthetical Citations MLA Format

Name: ______Period: ______Parenthetical Citations & MLA Format

In a critical or analytical essay, you may often need to use quotations from another text in order to support your thesis and defend your argument. It’s important to distinguish your thoughts from those of the source. You must insure that the reader always knows when your ideas have stopped and the author’s ideas have begun. We use something called parenthetical citation to accomplish this.

What to Cite direct quotes, summaries, and paraphrases that are not your original thoughts

Introducing a Source for the First Time When you introduce a source into your paper for the first time, it is important to incorporate the title of the author’s work, the author’s name, and, if appropriate, the author’s credentials. This strengthens your argument.

Example Fred Bob, professor at Yale University, addressed capital punishment in his book The Big Book of Information.

Format The parenthetical citation includes the author’s last name and page number. If there is no author, the title of the book/article is used. Do not use a comma between the author’s last name and the page number. Also, do not include pp. or pg. before the page number.

Example “Here is my quote” (Smith 45).

— OR—

Smith said, “Here is my quote” (45).

Location of Citation Parenthetical citations occur after the quoted (or borrowed) material, but before the sentence’s punctuation. If the citation only applies to a portion of the sentence, then place it after the quote or paraphrase but in a place that will least likely disrupt the flow of the sentence.

Example The government is covering up the existence of alien life forms (Smith 4).

Example While Smith argues that “the classroom is not the place for certain discussions” (45), Baker asserts that freedom of speech cannot be restricted in the classroom (33).