MLA Parenthetical Citation Formats
The following are a few examples of parenthetical citation formats. For more detailed information, consult the MLA Handbook (6th edition) located on our bookshelves at 808.02 GIB. Please note: When using online resources, page numbers are omitted from the parenthetical citation.
*When you omit the author’s name in your sentence:
One research has found that dreams move backward in time as the night progresses (Dement 71).
*When you mention the author’s name in your sentence:
Freud states that “a dream is the fulfillment of a wish” (154).
When you use a website and mention the author’s name, OMIT the page number:
Smith states that “we are all individuals, similar but different.”
*When you cite more than one work by the same author:
One current theory emphasizes the principle that dreams express “profound aspects of personality” (Foulkes, “Sleep” 184). But investigation shows that young children’s dreams are “rather simple and unemotional” (Foulkes, “Dreams” 78).
*When the work has two or three authors:
Psychologists hold that no two children are alike (Gesell and Ilg 68).
*When the work has more than three authors:
(Rosenberg et al. 14)
*When the work has no author, begin with the word by which the title is alphabetized in the Works Cited:
Random testing for use of steroids by athletes is facing strong opposition by owners of several of
these teams (“Steroids” 22).
*When you quote or paraphrase a quotation from a book or article that appeared somewhere else:
Bacon observed that “it is hardly possible at once to admire an author and to go beyond him” (qtd. in Guibroy 113).
*When you cite a personal interview:
“Drinking milk made me a better person,” stated the artist (Vanilli). (Note: If you mention the name of your interview subject in your text, no parenthetical citation is necessary.)
*When you are citing several sources for a single passage:
There are negative implications to computerizing commercial art (Parker 2; “Art Nonsense” 43).
When you cite a character in a literary work:
Chai explains, “I reached out and smoothed out the frown lines on his forehead” (Pan 105).
When you cite a long quotation (five lines or more) that is set off from the text (Note that the quote is indented, double spaced, and without quotation marks):
No one is really certain about the origins of the term “Dust Bowl”:
H.L. Mencken in a footnote to the first supplement (1945) to his
monumental The American Language traces the term...to an Associated
Press dispatch sent by staff writer Robert Geiger on April 15, 1935. (French 3)
*When you paraphrase a whole passage or several passages, begin your citation with the author’s or article’s name and end it with the page number:
According to Brown, everytime you read an essay, you are preparing to write one. Therefore, you should pay careful attention to content and form (9).
When quoting from a website, use author (same format as print citation) or, if no author, title. Include page number, if given.
To identify the source of a quotation, paraphrase, or summary, place the author's last name in parentheses after the cited material (Harnack and Kleppinger). b Web pages number in the billions! (SearchQuest).
*These examples have been borrowed from Chico High School Library (CA) and the Purdue University On-Line Writing Lab.
