If you use links to other people’s works in the text, they must be highlighted with brackets. In doing so, you provide background information in parentheses whenever there is a quote or paraphrase in the sentence. The easiest way is to indicate the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence, that is, before the period. In some cases, you need to put a parenthesis elsewhere in the sentence, or omit the information altogether.
Citations in the text: basics
Information about the source of literature, which is enclosed in brackets, depends on 2 factors:
- Source media (DVD, print, internet).
- Source entry on the cited works page.
Please note that the information in the text must match the information in the “Works Cited” section.
Quoting in the text on the author’s page
According to MLA style requirements, the author’s surname and the page number from which you got the quote should be indicated in the text. You don’t need to provide full information in the text, please indicate it on your page of cited works.
Include the author’s name either in the sentence itself or in parentheses after the quote or paraphrase. Indicate the page number in brackets, but not in the sentence itself:
Noddings mentions that some law schools use the “Socratic method”: it is “destructive cross-examination (elenchus) – continues until either teacher or student or both feel that the analysis has gone as far as they can take it at the moment” ( 23).
You can write this sentence differently:
Some law schools use the “Socratic method”: it is “destructive cross-examination (elenchus) – continues until either teacher or student or both feel that the analysis has gone as far as they can take it at the moment” (Noddings 23).
In both sentences, the reader learns that the information is taken from page 23 of the book of author Noddings. If the reader wants to know the name of this book, by whom and when it was published, and other additional information, he can go to the page of cited works, where he will read:
Noddings, Nell. Philosophy of Education. 4th ed., Routledge, 2018.
Citation in the text of printed books with a famous author
Printed sources include:
- Books.
- Journals.
- Articles in scientific journals.
- Newspapers.
For them, include a signal word or phrase (for example, the author’s last name) and a page number. If you include a signal word or phrase in a sentence, do not write it in parentheses.
Mary Shelley describes Frankenstein’s monster like this: “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch” (52).
Frankenstein’s monster is described as: “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch” (Mary Shelley 52).
These examples are matched by an entry on the cited works page that begins with Shelley:
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1818). “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus”. Retrieved 3 November 2012 – via Gutenberg Project.
Citation of print sources from a corporate author
If the source has a corporate author, use the corporation name. After it, indicate the page number to be cited in the text. Also use abbreviations (eg nat’l for national language). This will shorten too long quotes in brackets and make the text easier to read.
In text-citations without a known author
In this case, you do not need to indicate the name of the author. Just write the abbreviated title of the work. If it’s a short article, use quotation marks around the title, or if it’s a play, book, or website, include a page number if available:
If the mass of a star is higher than 0.5 M, then it “continues to shrink in accordance with the Henyi track and heat up until a thermonuclear reaction of hydrogen conversion into helium starts in its interior…”. (“The Early Phases of Stellar Evolution”)
In this example, you do not know the author of the article, so the title is indicated in brackets. The full title of the article is indicated on the left margin of the corresponding entry on the page of cited works:
L. G. Henyey; R. Lelevier; R. D. Levée. The Early Phases of Stellar Evolution // Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific: journal. — 1955. — Vol. 67, no. 396. — P. 154.