77 MLA: What is an In-Text Citation?
Sarah Bailey; Kara Blizzard; Doris Wagner; and Christina Frasier
Learning Objectives
- Create in-text citations using MLA style for narrative and parenthetical citation
- Format author names in parenthetical citations
- Format page numbers and other divisions in parenthetical citations
Narrative and parenthetical citation
The information for an in-text citation is pulled directly from its matching works cited list entry. It is usually easiest to create the works cited entry first and use it to create an in-text citation. The example below shows a works cited list entry.
Dolmage, Jay Timothy. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. U of Michigan P, 2017. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/j.ctvr33d50.
There are two different ways you can add an in-text citation to your writing: as a narrative citation, in which the author’s name is part of your sentence, or as a parenthetical citation, in which the citation details are given in parentheses at the end of a phrase or sentence.
Here is a sentence with a narrative citation that matches the works cited list entry above:
Here is the same sentence, but with a parenthetical citation:
As the above examples show, an in-text citation includes two key pieces of information:
- Author last name(s) (e.g., Dolmage)
- Page number, or other location within a work (e.g., 117)
Formatting author names
The following table shows examples of how to format the author element for in-text citations.
| Author Type | Formatting | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 author or editor | Last Name | Dolmage |
| 2 authors or editors | Last Name and Last Name | Stuessy and Lipscomb |
| 3+ authors or editors | Last Name et al. | Kameron et al. |
| Organization or group | Organization Name | United Nations Human Settlements Programme |
| No author | Title of Work | Room |
Formatting page numbers and other divisions
The next table shows how to format page numbers and other divisions of works in your in-text citation. For most works, you should use a page number. For poetry or drama, you should usually use line numbers. For works with no page numbers, you might use a chapter, scene, or other division provided in the work. This information should go in parentheses at the end of the words or ideas you are citing. For works without any page numbers or any other division, do not include a number in the parenthetical citation; just follow the guidelines for Formatting Author Names.
| Type of Division | Example |
|---|---|
| Single page | 117 |
| Page range | 12-13 |
| Line number | line 72* |
| Chapter | ch. 3 |
| Scene | sc. 5 |
*Include the word “line” only the first time you cite the work.
Direct quotation
So far we have focused on paraphrasing examples. Next we will explore how to cite quotations.
Short quotations
For a quotation that “runs no more than four lines in your paper” (MLA Handbook, sec. 6.34), incorporate it into your paragraph with quotation marks around it. The following examples are for prose. If you are quoting more than one line of poetry, add a forward slash ( / ) between the lines.
Narrative citation example
Parenthetical citation example
Block quotations
According to the MLA Handbook, “a quotation that runs more than four lines in your prose should be set off from the text as a block indented half an inch from the left margin” (sec. 6.35). The following examples are for a poem, but the rules are the same for prose.
Narrative citation
In Rich’s poem, the narrator’s gender is fluid:
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he (lines 72-77)
Parenthetical citation
The narrator’s gender is fluid:
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he (Rich lines 72-77)
MLA Style Citation Tutorial, 9th ed. by Sarah Bailey; Kara Blizzard; and Doris Wagner, CC BY-SA 4.0