Internal Citations
Proper Documentations of Internal Citations
The MLA ststem uses notations that appear within the text and are set off by parentheses. The citation consists of the last name of the author and page number(s) of the publication in which the material originally appeared. The following examples illustrate the proper format for internal citations
Handling Paraphrased Material
Works Cited Reference
Bryan, Christopher. "Big Steel's Winter of Woes." Time 24 Jan. 1983: 58.
Passage and Citation
Steel workers in this country make an average of twenty-four dollars an hour, including benefits, whereas Japanese workers make just over eleven dollars an hour (Bryan 58).
Bryan notes that steel workers in this country make an average of twenty-four dollars an hour, including benefits, whereas Japanese workers make just over eleven dollars an hour (58).
Works Cited Reference
Weider, Benjamin, and David Hapgood. The Murder of Napoleon. New York: Cogdon, 1982.
Passage and Citation
Four different autopsy reports were filed. All reports agreed that there was a cancerous ulcer in Napoleon's stomach, but none of them declared that the cancer was the cause of death. Nevertheless, cancer has become accepted as the cause (Weider and Hapgood 72).
If a source has more than three authors, use et al., meaning "and others," for all but the first-named one.
Works Cited Reference
Baugh, Albert C., et al. A Literary History of England. New York: Appleton, 1948.
Passage and Citation
Although no one knows for certain just when Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher started collaborating, by 1610 they were writing plays together (Baugh et al. 573).
Authors with the Same Last Name. If your notes include authors with the same last name, use the initials of their first names to distinguish them
Works Cited References
Adler, Jerry. "Search for an Orange Thread." Newsweek 16 June 1980: 32-34.
Adler, William L. "the Agent Orange Controversy." Detroit Free Press 18 Dec. 1979: B2.
Passage and Citation
As early as 1966, government studies showed that dioxin-contaminated 2, 4, 5-T caused birth defects in laboratory animals. Later studies also found that this herbicide was to blame for miscarriages, liver abscesses, and nerve damage (J. Adler 32).
Separate Works by the Same Author. If your references include two or more works by the same author, add shortened forms of the titles to your in-text citation. Underline shortened book titles and use quotations marks around article and essay titles.
Works Cited Reference
Mullin, Dennis. "After U.S. Troops Pull Out of Grenada." U.S. News & World Report 14 Nov. 1983: 31-34.
---. "Why the Surprise Move in Grenada-and What Next." U.S. News & World Report 7 Nov. 1983: 22-25.
Passage and Citation
As the rangers evacuated students, the marines launched another offensive at Grand Mal Bay, then moved south to seize the capital and free the governor (Mullin, "Why the Surprise" 33).
Two Separate Sources for the Same Citation. If two sources provide essentially the same information and you wish to mention both in one parenthetical citation, group them together with a semicolon between them and position them as you would any other citation.
Works Cited Reference
Bryce, Bonnie. "The Controversy over Funding Community Colleges." Detroit Free Press 13 Nov. 1988: A4.
Warshow, Harry. "Community College Funding Hits a Snag." Grand Rapids Press 15 Nov. 1988: A2.
Passage and Citation
In contending that a 3 percent reduction in state funding for community colleges would not significantly hamper their operations, the governor overlooks the fact that community college enrollment is expected to jump by 15 percent next year (Bryce A4; Warshow A2).
Unsigned References. When you use a source for which no author is given, the in-text citation consists of all or part of the title, the appropriate page numbers.
Works Cited Reference
"Reform in sight ofr People's Right to Know." American Libraries 4 (1975): 540.
Passage and Citation
In 1974, Congress proposed several amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, only to have President Ford reject them on the grounds that they were "unconstitutional and unworkable." But while Ford was out of the country in early 1975, Congress voted overwhelmingly to enact them into law ("Reform in Sight" 540).
Citing Quotations. When the quotation is run into the text, position the citation as shown below.
Works Cited Reference
Verney, Thomas, M.D., and John Kelly. The Secret life of the Unborn Child. New York: Simon, 1981.
Passage and Citation
Investigators who have studied mother-child bonding have found that "women who bond become better mothers, and their babies almost always are physically healthier, emotionally more stable and intellectually more acute than infants taken from their mothers right after birth" (Verney and Kelly 146).
With longer indented quotations, skip two horizontal spaces after the end punctuation and type the reference in parentheses.
Works Cited Reference
Newhouse, John. "The Diplomatic Round: A Freemasonry of Terrorism." New Yorker 8 July 1985: 46-63.
Passage and Citation
The reason that America has been spared so far, apparently, is that it is less vulnerable than Europe, especially to Middle Eastern extremists. Moving in and out of most European countries isn't difficult for non-Europeans; border controls are negligible. But American customs and immigration authorities, being hyper-alert to drug traffic, tend to pay attention to even marginally doubtful people, and a would-be terrorist. . . could come under surveillance for the wrong reason. (Newhouse 63)
Indirect Citations. If you use a quotation from a person A that you obtained from a book or article written by person B, or you paraphrase such a quotation, put "qtd. in" before the name of the publication's author in the parenthetical reference.
Works Cited Reference
Klein, Joe. "Ready for Rudy." New York 6 Mar. 1989: 30-37.
Passage and Citation
U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani favors the death penalty for "the murder of a law-enforcement officer, mass murder, a particularly heinous killing" but would impose it only "when there is certainty of guilt well beyond a reasonable doubt" (qtd. in Klein 37).
Authors Identified in Text. Sometimes you'll want to introduce a paraphrase, summary, or quotation with the name of its author. In this case the page number may be positioned immediately after the name or follow the material cited.
Works Cited Reference
Jacoby, Susan. "Waiting for the End: On Nursing Homes." New York Times Magazine 31 March 1974: 80.
Passage and Citation
Susan Jacoby (80) sums up the grim outlook of patients in bad nursing homes by noting that they are merely waiting to die.
Susan Jacoby sums up the grim outlook of patients in bad nursing homes by noting that they are merely waiting to die (80).
Handling Quotations. Set off quotations fewer than five lines long with quotation marks and run them into the text of the paper. For longer quotes omit the quotation marks and indent the material ten spaces from the left-hand margin. Double-space the typing. If you quote part or all of one paragraph, don't further indent the first line. If you quote two or more consecutive paragraphs, indent each one's first line three additional spaces. Use single quotation marks for a quotation within a shorter quotation and double marks for a quotation within a longer, indented quotation. The following examples illustrate the handling of quotations.
Short Quotation
Ellen Goodman offers this further observation about writers who peddle formulas for achieving success through selfishness: "They are all Doctor Feelgoods, offering placebo prescriptions instead of strong medicine. They give us a way to live with ourselves, perhaps, but not a way to live with each other" (16).
Quotation Within Short Quotation
The report further stated, "All great writing styles have their wellsprings in the personality of the writer. As Buffon said, 'The style is the man'" (Duncan 49).
Quotation Within Longer, Indented Quotation
Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower presents a somewhat different view of the new conservative leaders:
Besides riches, rank, broad acres, and ancient lineage, the new government also possessed, to the regret of the liberal opposition, and in the words of one of them, "an almost embarrassing wealth of talent and capacity." Secure in authority, resting comfortably on their electoral majority in the House of Commons and on a permanent majority in the Hose of Lords, of whom four-fifths were conservatives, they were in a position, admitted the same opponent, "of unassailable strength." (4)
Always provide some context for material that you quote. Various options exist. When you quote from a source for the first time, you might provide the author's full name and source of the quotation, perhaps indicating the author's expertise as well. The passage just above omits the author's expertise; the passage below includes it.
Writing in Newsweek mgazine, Riena Gross, chief psychiatric social worker at Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, said, "Kids have no real sense that they belong anywhere or to anyone as they did ten or fifteen years ago. Parents have loosened the reins, and kids are kind of floundering" (74).
Or you might note the event prompting the quotation and then the author's name.
Addressing a seminar at the University of Toronto, Dr. Joseph Pomeranz speculated that "acupuncture may work by activating a neural pain suppression mechanism in the brain" (324).
On other occasions you might note only the author's full name and expertise.
Economist Richard M. Cybert, President of Carnegie-Mellon University, offers the following sad prediction about the steel industry's future: "It will never be as large as industry as it has been. There are a lot of plants that will never come back and many laborers that will never be rehired" (43).
When quoting from a source with no author given, introduce the quotation with the name of the source.
Commenting upon the problems that law enforcement personnel have in coping with computer crime, Credit and Financial Management magazine pointed out that "A computer crime can be committed in three hundredths of a second, and the criminal can be thousands of miles from the 'scene,' using a telephone" ("Computer Crime" 43).
After first citing an author's full name, use only the last name for subsequent references.
In answering the objections of governmental agencies to the Freedom of Information Act, Wellford commented, "Increased citizen access should help citizens learn of governmental activities that weaken our First Amendment freedoms. Some administrative inconvenience isn't too large a price to pay for that" (137).
Page numbers are not helpful when you cite passages from plays and poems since these literary forms are available in many editions. When you quote from a play, identify the act, scene, and line numbers. Use Arabic numbers separated by periods. Here's how to cite Act 2, Scene 1, lines 258-63 of Shakespeare's Othello.
That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it;
That she loves him, 'tis apt, and of great credit:
The Moor, how be it that I endure him not,
Is of a constant, loving, noble nature;
And I dare think he'll provide to Desdemona
A most dear husband. (Othello 2.1. 258-63)
When quoting from a short poem, use "line" or "lines" and the line number(s):
In "Dover Beach," Matthew Arnold offers this melancholy assessment of the state of religion :
The Sea of Faith
Was once, took at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. (lines 21-26)
In quoting poetry that has been run into the text, use a slash mark (/) to indicate the shift from one line to the next in the original :
In his ode "To Autumn," Keats says that Autumn is the "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,/Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun" (lines 1-2).
Internet Sites - Enclose URLs in angle brackets. If a URL must be divided between two lines, break it only after a slash; do not introduce a hyphen at the break or allow your word-processing program to do so. Give the complete address, including the accessmode identifier (http, ftp, gopher, telnet, news) and, after the first single slash, any relevant path and file names:
<http://www.princeton.edu/~lancelot/>