MLA Citations

Sigh.

It's always always a bit of a drudge citing sources. 

Let's just get right to it so that you can get back to reading and thinking and writing. 

In-Text Citation | Works Cited Entries | Punctuation When Citing Sources 

But first……

A quick head's up on formatting conventions: 

In-Text Citation

For in-text citations, the convention is that you just include the page number for your primary source.  If there's any chance of confusion, include the author's name in a phrase before the quote itself.

Twain makes clear that Huck rejects domesticity by his fear of being "sivilize[d]" at the end of the novel (293).

The square brackets ([d]) alert the reader that you, the writer, have added something to the quote.
Sammy's turn from hormone charged teen to independent citizen is signaled by a remarkably low-key sentence.  As he responds to Lengel's question about ringing up the girls, the story reads "I though and said 'No' but that wasn't what I was thinking" (167).

Note that the quotation marks in the original primary source were changed to single quotes.  And note what's included (and what's not) in the parenthesis and the placement of the quotation marks and period.

Work Cited

The work cited entry for the Twain quote, it would read as follows:

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Norton 
     Anthology of American Literature, vol. D, edited by Nina Baym, et al., 
     W.W. Norton & Company 2007, pp. 108-294.

For the Updike quote above would read as follows:
Updike, John. "A&P." The Norton Introduction to Literature,
     edited by Kelly J. Mays, W.W. Norton & 
     Company, 2015, pp. 163-168.

This is the correct format for MLA 8. 

Note hanging indent, italics, etc. Page numbers and editors may be different for particular editions: your results will vary.  Check your own textbook for specifics.

For more information on citation with many more examples, see the Perdue OWL citing sources link.

 Punctuation with Citations

Use the following examples (using Tim O'Brien's Things They Carried as a primary source) to guide your use of punctuation when citing sources.

For basic punctuation: note placement of period and that author's name isn't needed for primary sources (you've already mentioned it in the intro).

"Henry Dobbins made the washing motion with his hands" (117).

 For question marks and exclamation, period at the end.

"Treat them decent, you know?" (117).

Quote illustrating set up/introduction/context

Dobbins, in the chapter "Church," shows how people can forget they are in war. Discussing his religious views with Kiowa, he says "I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear" (116).

Quote illustrating deletion of a sentence -- note brackets and four ellipsis dots

Dobbins, in the chapter "Church," shows how people can forget they are in war. Discussing his religious views with Kiowa, he says "I do like churches [ . . . . ] It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear" (116).

Quote illustrating deletion of a phrase -- note brackets and three ellipsis dots

Dobbins, in the chapter "Church," shows how people can forget they are in war. Discussing his religious views with Kiowa, he says "I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good [ . . . ] like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear" (116).

Quote illustrating separating quote into parts with a phrase

Dobbins, in the chapter "Church," shows how people can forget they are in war. Discussing his religious views with Kiowa, he says "I do like churches" (116). After this bland statement, he goes more into the emotions, removing himself from the jungles of Vietnam back to an idealized church in America: "It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear" (116).

Quote illustrating separating quote into parts with just a word or two.

Dobbins, in the chapter "Church," shows how people can forget they are in war. Discussing his religious views with Kiowa, he says "I do like churches" (116). He adds "It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear" (116).

Changing cases or tense in a quote

" _____ run _____"

"_____ [ran] _____"

 

"_____ love _____"

"_____ lov[ed] _____"


© David Bordelon 2017