In Text (Parenthetical) Citations Quick Guide

Include InText Materials Properly
When creating your essay, you will have source materials that you will use to strengthen your views, argue your topic, and assure the reader that you have explored al sides to the topic.


PUNCTUATING IN TEXT CITATIONS
When you incorporate a quote, paraphrase, or summary into your work you must provide proper citation--within the sentence itself. You will not wait until the end of the paragraph, and you cannot skip over in-text citations, assuming that the end of the paper Full-source citations will do the trick of attributing credit to the sources. Nope...you've got to make sure that the source is clearly referenced in the sentence where you used it.


Note the parenthetical reference in the following sentence: Christ declares his exclusive salvific value when he states, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). 

The Bible reference is not included within the quotation marks because it is not a part of Christ’s declaration. The period would come after the parenthesis because you cannot begin a new sentence without a period immediately preceding it.

Therefore, when integrating source content, be sure that your (in text citation) section is properly attached to the end of the sentence, prior to the end punctuation.  If you place the (in text citation) section after the end punctuation of the sentence, then it is not attached to anything, just hanging there, and you have not properly attributed the source to that sentence.

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR IN TEXT CITATION

Content below is from: MLA In-text Citations: The Basics URL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/  Contributors: Tony Russell, Allen Brizee, Elizabeth Angeli, Russell Keck, Joshua M. Paiz, Michelle Campbell, Rodrigo Rodríguez-Fuentes, Daniel P. Kenzie, Susan Wegener, Maryam Ghafoor, Purdue OWL Staff Last Edited: 2017-10-23 08:53:38

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what is known as parenthetical citation. This method involves placing relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or a paraphrase.
General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1.) upon the source medium (e.g. Print, Web, DVD) and (2.) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited (bibliography) page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text, must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry in the Works Cited List.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).
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).

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

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

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

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 . . ." ("Impact of Global Warming").

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title of the article appears in the parenthetical citation which corresponds to the full name of the article which appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs. 1999.

http://www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.