An in-text citation is the citation that appears in the body of your paper. The purpose of in-text citations is to give your reader the author and page of the information cited so that the reader can find the full citation in the Works Cited list and then track down the source on their own.
You cite sources within the text of your paper when you paraphrase a source and when you use a direct quote from a source. A paraphrase is a re-wording of a passage, where you explain someone else's ideas in your own words. A direct quote is when you take information word for word from a source. Both paraphrases and direct quotes require an in-text citation.
Any in-text citation should begin with the shortest piece of information that can be tied to the Works Cited list at the end of your paper. Both paraphrased information and direct quotes require the name of the author or authors and the page number where the information can be found.
If you are writing about the author's work and reference the author's name in prose, you write out the author's full name for the first citation and use the last name after that. If there is a specific page number for the information, include that in parentheses at the end of the sentence with the punctuation after the citation.
Louisa May Alcott left at least one unfinished work when she died.
Kate Lebo referenced Shakespeare in her own work on unusual fruit (172).
Lebo wrote essays about other unusual fruit with literary references and recipes (172).
At least one author has referenced Shakespeare in a work about unusual fruit (Lebo 172).
Unlike a Works Cited entry, you do not include an author's first name in a parenthetical citation. In-text citations include last name only, followed by the page number.
(Lebo 172)
In MLA 9 format, there are two types of in-text citations: Quotes and paraphrased information. Both quotes and paraphrased citations may be cited in parentheses for a parenthetical citation or with citation information given in the body of your text, which is called an in-prose citation in MLA 9. In all cases, the work's author and the page number or numbers must be cited.
For all in-text citations, the citation goes inside the final punctuation for the sentence. For direct quotes, the citation goes between the end quotes and the final punctuation.
In her writing, Maria R. Barefoot claims... (54).
The medlar is a fruit that is not often cultivated, if ever, and someone wanting medlars might seek out "arborists who plant rare fruit in their gardens" (Lebo 174).
"When Shakespeare was staging plays, medlars were the last ripe thing on the branches before winter blasted in, the only sweet thing besides honey that would have sweetened a not-extremely-wealthy-person's bread" (Lebo 173).
Kate Lebo states that "when Shakespeare was staging plays, medlars were the last ripe thing on the branches before winter blasted in, the only sweet thing besides honey that would have sweetened a not-extremely-wealthy-person's bread" (173).
"When Shakespeare was staging plays, medlars were the last ripe thing on the branches before winter blasted in, the only sweet thing besides honey that would have sweetened a not-extremely-wealthy-person's bread" (Lebo 173), indicating his understanding of everyday lives in England in the late 16th century.
During Shakespeare's time, the playwright would likely have been aware that medlars were one of the last fruits to ripen on the tree before the onset of winter, and therefore possibly the one sweet thing available other than honey for the working person's bread (Lebo 173).
According to Kate Lebo, Shakespeare would likely have been aware that medlars were one of the last fruits to ripen on the tree before the onset of winter, and therefore possibly the one sweet thing available other than honey for the working person's bread (173).
According to Arteaga and Moeller, the idea that... (22).
...supports this theory (Reyes and Cruz 119).
If you have more than three authors for a source, only use the first author's name, followed by et al. in every in-text citation, including in the first citation. You only use more author last names if there are other sources with the same author last name and it would be hard to distinguish between the sources.
As Safiya Umoji Noble et al. found in their work... (65).
...which leads to this conclusion (Al Zou'bi et al. 62).
If your quoted or paraphrased information references more than one of your sources, cite both authors and page numbers in parentheses, separated by a semicolon, at the end of the sentence before any punctuation.
(Eun Oh 682; Golash-Boza 136)
If your text references more than one of your sources in the same sentence, you may also place the parenthetical citation for each author after the cited information if they are being referenced separately or for different reasons.
While Reed asserts that... (210), this was directly contradicted by van Dijk when she considered... (321).
While this was certainly a strong case for... (Reed 210), it was directly contradicted by later research showing... (van Dijk 321).
If the author is an organization or governmental agency, use the organization name for the author. If the name is long, you may abbreviate words in the organization name to avoid interrupting the flow of your writing.
According to the Modern Language Association, both direct quotes and paraphrased information require a page number in the citation (228).
Both direct quotes and paraphrased information require a page number for in-text citations (Mod. Lang. Assn. 228).
According to Google... (2).
...the archived page shows change over time (Google 2).