Quick, Simple & Dirty MLA Guidelines
You need a 100 percent correspondence between the sources listed on your Works Cited page(s) and the sources you cite (refer to) in your paper. Do not omit from your Works Cited any sources you refer to in your paper. Do not include in your Works Cited any sources not referred to in your paper.
The simplest parenthetical reference can be prepared in one of three ways:
- Give the author's last name (full name in a first reference to an author) in the text of your
paper and place the relevant page number(s) in parentheses following the borrowed material.
Frederick Lewis Allen observes that, during the 1920s, urban tastes spread to the
country (146).
- Place the author's last name and the relevant page number(s) in parentheses immediately
following the borrowed material.
During the 1920s, “not only the drinks were mixed, but the company as well” (Allen 82).
- On the rare occasion that you cite an entire work rather than borrowing from a specific
passage, give the author's name in the text and omit any page numbers.
Tuchman argues that there are significant parallels between the fourteenth century and our time.
Each one of these intext references is complete only when the full citation is found in the Works Cited page, thus:
Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the NineteenTwenties..
New York: Harper, 1931.
Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York:
Knopf, 1978.
The simplest placing of a parenthetical reference is at the end of the appropriate sentence before the period, but, when you are quoting, after the quotation mark.
During the 1920s, “not only the drinks were mixed, but the company as well” (Allen 82).
Do not put any punctuation between the author's name and the page number.
If the borrowed material ends before the end of your sentence, place the parenthetical reference after the borrowed material and before any subsequent punctuation. This placement more accurately shows what is borrowed and what is your own work.
Sport, Allen observes about the 1920s, had developed into an obsession (66), another similarity between the 1920s and the 1980s.
If a quoted passage is long enough to require setting off in display form (block quotation), then place the parenthetical reference at the end of the passage, after the last period. (Remember that long quotations in display form do not have quotation marks.)
It is hard to believe that when he writes about the influence of science, Allen is describing the 1920s, not the 1980s:
The prestige of science was colossal. The man in the street and the woman in the kitchen, confronted on every hand with new machines and devices which they owed to the laboratory, were ready to believe that science could accomplish almost anything. (164)
And to complete the documentation for all three examples:
Works Cited
Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the NineteenTwenties.
New York: Harper, 1931.
Electronic Sources : Columbia Online Style to In-Text Citation of Electronic Sources in MLA-Style Papers
In-Text Citation: To cite an electronic source in the text of your paper, follow the same rules as for print sources. If the source has an author and there is a page, use both. Internet sources should use the parenthetic (in-text) citations in MLA style. For most Web pages, however, you will not have a page number, so will include the author's last name, if known (Walker), or the title if no author's name is given ("Columbia Online Style"). If section numbers, or paragraph numbers (“par.,” “sec.”) are included on the Web site by the author, you may include those in the reference as well. If the electronic source has no known author, either use the complete title in a signal phrase or use a short form of the title in parentheses.
Remember that the purpose of the parenthetic citation is to point to the location of the quotation or paraphrase in the referenced work and to point to the referenced work in the list of Works Cited. Whatever entry begins the reference in the Works Cited, then (i.e., author's last name or title of work), should be used in the parenthetic reference.
Works Cited Page : To cite files available on the WWW, give the author's name, last name first (if known); the full title of the work, in quotation marks; the title of the complete work (if applicable), in italics; any version or file numbers; and the date of the document or last revision (if available). Next, list the protocol (e.g., "http") and the full URL, followed by the date of access in parentheses.
Burka, Lauren P. "A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions." MUD History. 1993.
(2 Aug. 1996).
LECTURE: In-text Citation
"The gothic element of the French Symboliste movement owes much to the poets' fascination
with the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe" (McCarthy).
For the Works Cited Page
McCarthy, David. "The Decadence: The 1890s." English 204- The Novel
Lecture. Lower Columbia College, Longview, WA. 12 Dec. 2002.
INTERNET MLA WRITING GUIDES: