1
Created July 2009
UWF WRITING LAB
DOCUMENTATION STYLE
MLA STYLE
QUOTATION AND CITATION STYLE
Avoiding Plagiarism with Proper Citation and Attribution
The following information is adopted from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,
7th edition, 2009. This handout only covers the proper format and convention for annotated
bibliographies in MLA format. For other MLA style guidelines, please see appropriate handout.
Use and Accuracy of Quotations: Use quotations selectively. Quote only words, phrases, lines,
and passages that are particularly interesting, vivid, unusual, or apt, and keep all quotations as
brief as possible. The accuracy of quotations in research writing is extremely important. They
must reproduce the original sources exactly. Unless indicated in brackets or parentheses, changes
must not be made in the spelling, capitalization, or interior punctuation of the source. You must
construct a clear, grammatically correct sentence that allows you to introduce or incorporate a
quotation with complete accuracy. You may paraphrase the original, and you may choose to
quote only fragments.
When quoting an author for the first time in your text, be sure to give the author’s first and last
names as well as the full title of the work to which you are referring. From that initial point on,
the author may be referred to by only his or her last name only. In addition, if you refer to the
author in the sentence, you need to add only a page number at the end of the quotation, but if you
do not, then you must include the author’s last name and page number in the parenthetical
reference. Further, for parenthetical citations for works that do not have an author, the first few
words of the title should be included in the citation:
Book: (The Book of Common Prayer)
Article: (“The Art of Rhetoric”)
Prose: If a prose quotation runs no more than four lines and requires no special emphasis, put it
in quotations marks, and incorporate it into the text. You may put a quotation at the beginning,
middle, or end of your sentence or, for the sake of variety or better style, divide it by your own
words. Place the citation information for the quoted material in parentheses at the end of the
sentence. Place the sentence period after the reference citation.
Author mentioned in the sentence: “He was obeyed,” writes Joseph Conrad of the company
manager in Heart of Darkness, “yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect” (87).
Author not mentioned in the sentence: According to the narrator in Heart of Darkness, the
company manager was “obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect” (Conrad
87).
2
Created July 2009
Block quotation: If a quotation extends to more than four lines when run into the text, set it off
from your text by beginning a new line, indenting one inch from the left margin, and typing it
double-spaced, without adding quotation marks. A colon generally introduces a quotation
displayed in this way. If your quotation is lifted from the beginning of a paragraph, do not indent
the quotation. The quoted material is written in 12 pt font; the period, in this instance, is
positioned at the end of the quotation, with the citation after; and no quotation marks are used.
EXAMPLE:
At the conclusion of Lord of the Flies, Ralph and the other boys realize the horror of their
actions:
The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the
first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his
whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the
island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too.
(186)
Citing Indirect Sources: Whenever you can, take material from the original source, not a
secondhand one. Sometimes, however, only an indirect source is available—for example,
someone’s published account of another’s spoken remarks. If what you quote or paraphrase is
itself a quotation, put the abbreviation qtd. in (“quoted in”) before the indirect source you cite in
your parenthetical reference.
EXAMPLE: Samuel Johnson admitted that Edmund Burke was an “extraordinary man” (qtd. in
Boswell 2: 450).
Work Cited
Boswell, James. The Life of Johnson. Ed. George Birkbeck Hill and L. F. Powell. 6 vols. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1934-50. Print.
Poetry: If you quote part of all of a single line of verse that does not require special emphasis,
put it in quotation marks within your text. You may also incorporate two or three lines in this
way, using a slash with a space on each side ( / ) to separate them. At the end of the quotation,
indicate the lines of the poetry in parentheses, not the page number.
EXAMPLE: Reflecting on the “incident” in Baltimore, Cullen concludes, “Of all the things that
happened there / That’s all that I remember” (11-12).
3
Created July 2009
Verse quotations of more than three lines should begin on a new line. Unless the quotation
involves unusual spacing, indent each line one inch from the left margin and double-space
between lines, adding no quotation marks that do not appear in the original. A parenthetical
reference for a verse quotation set off from the text follows the last line of the quotation (as in
quotations of prose); a parenthetical reference that will not fit on the line should appear on a new
line, flush with the right margin of the page.
EXAMPLE:
Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” is rich in evocative detail:
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines. (6-10)
Altering a quotation: Whenever you wish to omit a word, a phrase, a sentence, or more from a
quoted passage, you should be guided by two principles: fairness to the author quoted and the
grammatical integrity of your writing. A quotation should never be presented in a way that could
cause a reader to misunderstand the sentence structure of the original source. If you quote only a
word or a phrase, it will be obvious that you left out some of the original sentence. Therefore, do
not use ellipsis (…). But if omitting material from the original sentence or sentences leaves a
quotation that appears to be a sentence or a series of sentences, you must use ellipsis points, to
indicate that your quotation does not completely reproduce the original. Whenever you omit
words from a quotation, the resulting passage—your prose and the quotation integrated into it—
should be grammatically complete and correct. When the ellipsis coincides with the end of your
sentence, use three periods with a space before each following a sentence period—that is, four
periods, with no space before the first or after the last. If a parenthetical reference follows the
ellipsis at the end of your sentence, however, use three periods with a space before each, and
place the sentence period after the final parenthesis.
Quotation with an Ellipsis in the Middle
In surveying various responses to plagues in the Middle Ages, Barbara W. Tuchman writes,
“Medical thinking . . . stressed air as the communicator of disease, ignoring sanitation or visible
carriers” (101-02).
Quotation with an Ellipsis at the End Followed by a Parenthetical Reference
In surveying various responses to plagues in the Middle Ages, Barbara W. Tuchman writes,
“Medical thinking, trapped in the theory of astral influences, stressed air as the communicator of
disease . . .” (101-02).
4
Created July 2009