Cite Your Sources: MLA In-text Citations

When you refer to the words or ideas of others in the body of your essay, you must make an in-text or parenthetical citation. 

Keep these things in mind:

1.  If it's on your "Works Cited" list, then you need to cite it in your essay.

2.  When in doubt, cite it!

Visit the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) for more information about in-text citations. All examples listed in the text below are taken from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) page. 

The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)  as it would appear in a Works Cited:

“MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics.” Purdue Writing Lab, Purdue University, 31 Dec.       
          2017, owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html.
          Accessed 2 Mar. 2022.

In-text citation guidelines

When you include an in-text or parenthetical citation, you are pointing your reader to the corresponding source as it appears in your Works Cited at the end of your paper, report, essay or presentation. You must include an in-text citation whenever you quote directly from a source or when you paraphrase or summarize information from a source.  The general rule is that you need to provide enough information in parentheses (and in your sentence if you are using a signaling phrase to reference the source) for your reader to easily identify the source. Usually this means you provide the author's last name or the first few words of the title of a source if there is no named authors. A few examples and variations are outlined below.

Author-page in-text citations

If your source has a named author and page numbers, follow this format. Note that the author's name appears (or is signaled) in the second example so it does not need to be repeated in parentheses.

Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).

Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).

Here is how the source would appear in the Works Cited:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. Oxford UP, 1967.

Print sources with named author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as "symbol-using animals" (3).

Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).

Here is how the source would appear in the Works Cited:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. University of California Press, 1966.

The above-mentioned rules apply whether the author is an individual or a corporation if the name of the corporate author is the first thing that appears in the Works Cited. 

In-text citation for poetry

When you are citing a poem (or a play by Shakespeare, for example), you need to include line numbers, not page numbers. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. 
“In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their 
intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

In-text citation when you do not know the author's name

When the author's name is not listed in the Works Cited, include a shortened version of the title as it appears in the Works Cited instead. It's important that the information you include in parentheses begins with the same word or words as the source appears in the Works Cited. Put the title or shortened title in quotation marks if it's a shorter work such as an article, a short story, a poem, or a song. Put the title or shortened title in italics if it is a book, a play, a movie, a TV show or a webpage title.

For example:

We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has "more readily accessible climatic data and more 
comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change . . ." ("The Impact of Global Warming").

The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs. 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

In-text citations when two or more authors in your Works Cited have the same last name

If your Works Cited includes two authors (or more) with the same last name, include the first initial in the in-text citation in order to point your reader to the correct source. If two authors have the same last name and the same first initial, include their full first name in addition to their last name. Remember, the purpose of in-text citation is to make sure your reader can identify the source of your information. Include as much information as they need to do that. For example:

Although some medical ethicists claim that cloning will lead to designer children (R. Miller 12), others note that the advantages for 
medical research outweigh this consideration (A. Miller 46).

In-text citations for works with more than one author

For a source with two authors, list both authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Best and Marcus argue that one should read a text for what it says on its surface, rather than looking for some hidden meaning (9).

The authors claim that surface reading looks at what is “evident, perceptible, apprehensible in texts” (Best and Marcus 9).

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, 
          doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, only include the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

According to Franck et al., “Current agricultural policies in the U.S. are contributing to the poor health of Americans” (327).

The authors claim that one cause of obesity in the United States is government-funded farm subsidies (Franck et al. 327).

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 
          vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

In-text citations when you have more than one work by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author:

Lightenor has argued that computers are not useful tools for small children ("Too Soon" 38), though he has acknowledged elsewhere that 
early exposure to computer games does lead to better small motor skill development in a child's second and third year ("Hand-Eye Development" 17).

Citing two books by the same author:

Murray states that writing is "a process" that "varies with our thinking style" (Write to Learn 6). Additionally, Murray argues that the purpose of writing is to 
"carry ideas and information from the mind of one person into the mind of another" (A Writer Teaches Writing 3).

If the author's name is not signaled (or mentioned) in the sentence, include the author's last name in parentheses followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Visual studies, because it is such a new discipline, may be "too easy" (Elkins, "Visual Studies" 63).

In-text citations for indirect sources

Sometimes you will want to cite something that someone else cites in a source you've used. This is called an indirect quotation. While it is always best to quote from the original sources, it's sometimes difficult to do. In order to show your reader which source it came from you need to use "qtd. in" as a short-form in the in-text citation. For example:

Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as "social service centers, and they don't do that well" (qtd. in Weisman 259).

In-text citations for plays, screenplays or interview transcripts

When you quote from a source that includes dialogue or questions and answers, you need to reproduce it exactly as it appears in the original text. For example, you need to include the spearker's name in ALLCAPS followed by a period (.) and indent hanging lines. Many of these types of texts won't have line numbers (Shakespeare's works and other classics being exceptions) so you need to include Act and Scene numbers or page numbers as appropriate. For plays and screenplays, Act and Scene appear only as numbers with a period (.) between them as in the example below.

Here is an example from O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

Alcohol makes an early appearance in O'Neill's play. In the very first scene, O'Neill's characters treat alcohol as a panacea for their ills:

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

In-text citations for YouTube videos

The general format for citing online videos in MLA style is as follows:

"Title of video." YouTube, uploaded by Screen Name, day month year, www.youtube.com/xxxxx. Accessed [date].

If the author of the video is not the same as the person who uploaded the video, your citation would be formatted as follows:

Author last name, First Name. "Title of video." YouTube, uploaded by Screen Name, day month year, www.youtube.com/xxxxx. Accessed [date].

If the author’s name is the same as the uploader, only cite the author once. If the author is different from the uploader, cite the author’s name before the title.

McGonigal, Jane. “Gaming and Productivity.” YouTube, uploaded by Big Think, 3 July 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdzy9bWW3E. 
          Accessed 2 January 2020.

“8 Hot Dog Gadgets put to the Test.” YouTube, uploaded by Crazy Russian Hacker, 6 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBlpjSEtELs. 
          Accessed 2 January 2020. 

In-text citations for the above-mentioned examples would be (McGonigal) or ("8 Hot Dog Gadgets") with a timestamp if you're referring to a specific spot in the video. For example (McGonical, 00:15:23-00:15:30) or ("8 Hot Dog Gadgets," 00:02:11) would denote the source and the hour:minute:second location of the quotation or reference with the first example showing a 30-second duration of time.

In-text citations for Tik Tok videos

These examples are taken from the MLA Style Center. For more information on citing social media, visit the MLA Style Center's "Citing Material Posted on Social Media Platforms" page written by Jennifer Rappaport.

Citing a video:

In-text citation:
An example of the Dark Academic aesthetic can be found on TikTok (Lilly).

Here's how it would appear in your Works Cited:
Lilly [@uvisaa]. “[I]f u like dark academia there’s a good chance you’ve seen my tumblr #darkacademia.” TikTok, 2020, 
          www.tiktok.com/@uvisaa/video/6815708894900391173. Accessed 22 January 2021.

Citing a profile:

Several artists post videos of themselves on TikTok (Keys).

Here's how it would appear in your Works Cited:
Keys, Alicia. “Videos.” TikTok, 2020, www.tiktok.com/@aliciakeys?lang=en. Accessed 22 January 2021.