MLA Help: In-Text Citations

In-text citations are citations that happen within the body or text of your paper, hence the name "in-text". These citations are in addition to the list of Works Cited that comes at the end of your paper. The idea is to include just enough information in your in-text citation that a person reading your paper would be able to easily find the full citation on your Works Cited page, where they can find all the necessary information. There are two types of in-text citations: parenthetical citations and narrative citations. For MLA format you need to include the author's last name and the page number where you found the information. 

Parenthetical citations come at the end of your paraphrase or quotation. They are called parenthetical because all of the information in the citation is contained within parentheses.

They look like this: (Alexander 263).

Narrative citations incorporate one or more parts of the citation into the text itself instead of keeping it all in the parentheses. For example, the previous citations might look like this:

Alexander performed an experiment that had a deep impact on future generations (263).

Quotations use direct words from a source. Short quotations should be enclosed in double quotation marks. A quote might look like this:

Schwartz stated that "those burdens impair our ability to function in the world" (74).

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How do you know what to include in your in-text citation?

You will draw the information from your Works Cited page entry. 

Below you will see a Works Cited page entry with the different parts highlighted in different colors. The author is in pink, the date is in blue, the title is in yellow, the source is in green and the page numbers are in orange.

Alexander, Patricia A. "Past as Prologue: Educational Psychology’s Legacy and Progeny." Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 110, no. 2, 2018, pp.147-162, https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000200.

Now look at these parenthetical and narrative citations, and see how the information lines up by color.

Parenthetical: (Alexander 147).

Narrative: Alexander states that ... (153). 

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What if your source has an unknown author?

You'll use a shortened title of the work in the place of the author using the first few words of the title, excluding articles like "A "and "the". For short works, such as an article or webpage, the shortened title will be in quotation marks. For longer works, such as a book or entire web sites, it will be in italics. Here's an example of a citation in on Works Cited page with no author.

"Sensory memory." The Human Memory, 20 May 2022, https://www.human-memory.net/sensory-memory. Accessed 19 Dec. 2022.

This is corresponding parenthetical citation (a page number is not included because it is not available for this electronic source):

("Sensory memory"). 

What if your source has more than one author?

If your source has two authors, you'll include them both and then include the page number.

(Salas and D'Agostino 133).

Salas and D'Agostino write that... (133).

If your source has three or more authors, you'll include only the first one, and then the abbreviation "et al.", which means "and the rest", as follows:

(Martin et al. 328).

What if your source has a corporate author?

Sometimes a source won't have an individual as an author but it may be something written by a corporation. In that case you can use the corporation as the author and then have the page number. 

(American Cancer Society 18).

What if your source has no page numbers?

Many electronic sources do not have page numbers. For these sources you leave out the page number part of the in-text citations. 

(Montgomery and Smith).