Parenthetical Citations: Giving credit where credit is due
You must give credit to any writer from whose work you have gathered specific information
This includes facts, statistics, examples, anecdotes, expert opinions.
When should you cite? CITE BORROWED WORDS AND BORROWED IDEAS
 DIRECT QUOTES. Be sure to put all borrowed words and expressions in quotation marks!
EX: Surveys show that “four out of ten homes have defective smoke detectors” (Jones A2).

PARAPHRASED information (a source’s idea in your own words and sentence structure).
Original: “It seems like such a small thing now. But everyday stresses add up, according to Tamar E. Chansky, a psychologist in
Plymouth Meeting, Pa., who treats people with anxiety disorders. You’ll be much better able to deal with a serious, unexpected
challenge if you lower your daily stress levels, she said. When worry is a constant, “it takes less to tip the scales to make you feel
agitated or plagued by physical symptoms, even in minor situations,” she wrote in her very practical book, “Freeing Yourself From
Anxiety.”
GOOD PARAPHRASE:
Shockingly, results from surveys reveal that 40% of homes contain smoke detectors that do not work (Jones A2).
BAD PARAPHRASE:
Surveys demonstrate that out of ten homes, four have defective smoke detectors (Jones A2).
(writer plugged in a few synonyms and kept much of the original wording)
 SUMMARIZED information (reduction of source’s information to a few lines in your own words).
EX: According to Fire Chief Pat Jones, recent surveys show that 40% of homes contain ineffective
smoke detectors, and an even greater percentage of residences lack an emergency exit plan. In the
survey, 30% of children claimed to feel that closets, and the space under their beds were safe places
to go during a fire (Jones A2-A3).
If you do not cite your source in all three of these situations, you are plagiarizing.
HOW DO YOU CITE?
Give credit within the body of your paper using parenthetical citations. Parenthetical citations are simply credits given
within parenthesis immediately following the borrowed information but before the period, stating the author and page
number of the information.
EX: --Over eighty-five percent of drivers have admitted to using a cell phone while driving (Green 182).
--“Eighty-five percent of drivers have admitted to using a cell phone while driving a motor vehicle” (Green 182).
(*notice how the citation is placed after the quote but before the end punctuation)
--Experiments performed by researchers at Georgetown University prove that talking on cell phone while driving is more
hazardous than talking to passengers in the car or even driving after consuming one alcoholic beverage (“Risks of Driving
While Dialing”).
--“Those who drive and talk on the phone simultaneously are three times as likely to be involved in a non-fatal accident and
are twice as likely to be involved in a fatal accident” (Stone and Trember 271).
____________________________________________________________________________________
Work Cited
Green, Norman. Road Hazards. Houston: Random House, 1999.
Jones, Patrick. “Smoke Detectors Save Lives.” Philadelphia Daily News 3 June 2001: A2-A3.
“Risks of Driving While Dialing.” Ban the Phone. 3 May 2006 Georgetown University 27 April 2007
Stone, Gloria and Melissa Trember. Driving Dangers: A Scary Look at Your Odds of Crashing.
Chicago: Groton Pub., 2003.
M.L.A. parenthetical citation format:
1. Source with one author: Author’s last name followed by page number(s). GIVE AUTHOR—not editor
(Stark 120)
2. Sources with two to three authors: All authors’ last names followed by page number.
( Burt and Ernie 73)
3. Sources with four or more authors: Include only the first author’s last name followed by “et al.”
(Doe et al. 137)
4. Source with no author given: Title or shortened form of it and the page number.
(“Dangerous Drivers” 152)
5. Source with no page numbers (on-line source): Author’s name only. If no author is given, title only.
(Wineman) or (“Road Rage”)
6. More than one source by the same author: Author’s last name and the title or shortened form of it
followed by page numbers. (Allan, “Euthanasia” 19) or (Allan, “Mercy Killing” 42)
7. Sources by authors with the same last name: First and last name of each author followed by page
number. (Joe Dirt 99) (Zack Dirt 485)
8. An indirect source; when a writer’s or speaker’s quoted words appear in a source written by
someone else: [For example, if in the newspaper article you are reading about capital punishment, the
writer interviews a death row inmate, the inmate’s words would be an indirect source.]
Begin the citation with the abbreviation “qtd. in”. (qtd. in Robinson 298).
Death Row inmate Hank Drake states, “I was not thinking about the electric chair when I murdered him” (qtd. in
Robinson 298).
9. Author named in signal phrase: Page number only. If you name the author of the work in the actual
sentence, you can omit his name at the end of the sentence. For example…
Mallory stated that affirmative action is not equivalent to reverse discrimination (120).
According to Frank Gordon, author of Cloning for Dummies, the idea that cloning humans would produce “evil
twins” is ridiculous (56).
NOTICE that the information in the parenthetical citation is typically
the first word(s) listed in the works cited entry.
A parenthetical citation comes before the sentence’s end punctuation.
There is no punctuation within the parenthesis.