MLA: Quoting
and In-text
Citations
Professor Yvonne Flack
Wednesday February 20, 2013
WRC Workshop
MLA Rules for
Quoting
1. A quotation is NEVER a sentence of its own. You must always
integrate the quote into your own words.
•
•
•
a. For example…your paper should never look like this:
I am writing about Twelfth Night. “A virtuous maid” (1.2.34).
b. Your paper should look like this:
•
•
I am writing about Twelfth Night. The captain describes
Viola as “[a] virtuous maid” (1.2.34).
I am writing about Twelfth Night. The Captain says, “A
virtuous maid” (1.2.34).
MLA Rules for
Quoting
2. In almost all situations, you should
capitalize the first word of a quotation.
•
a. Exception: If you use “that” or “as” to
introduce the quote, DO NOT capitalize
first word of the quote
MLA Rules for
Quoting
3. The parenthetical in-text citation comes
after the quotation marks, but before the
period.
4. Quotations should be copied exactly as
they appear in the original. If there is a
spelling or other sort of error in the original,
copy it exactly as it is and insert [sic] after
the error inside the quote.
MLA Rules for
Quoting
5. Quotations that take up more than 4 typed lines must take the form
of a block quotation. Indent the quotation an inch (ten character
spaces) from the left margin. Omit the quotation marks for block
quotes. The parenthetical citation comes after the punctuation with
block quotes. See the example below:
•
In “A Literacy Legacy from Dunbar to Baraka,” Margaret Walker says of
Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s dialect poems:
He realized that the white world in the United States tolerated his
literary genius only because of his “jingles in a broken tongue,”
and they found the old “darky” tales and speech amusing and
within the vein of folklore into which they wished to classify all
Negro life. This troubled Dunbar because he realized that white
America was denigrating him as a writer and as a man. (70)
Modifying Quotes
You may modify quotes for 4 purposes:
#1: To emphasize particular words
through italics. When using italics to
emphasize certain words, add the phrase
“emphasis added” into your parenthetical
citation. For example: (Smith 14;
emphasis added)
Modifying Quotes
#2: To omit irrelevant information.
Whenever you remove information from the
middle of a quote, indicate the removal by
inserting ellipses inside brackets: [...]
#3: To insert information necessary for
clarity. Include the extra information inside
brackets: [ ]
Modifying Quotes
#4: To make the quotation conform grammatically
to your sentence. Again, all additions, insertions
or modifications must be contained within
brackets to indicate that they were not part of the
original quote.
•
•
For example: The original quote reads: “we
played till our bodies glowed”
The quoted version: The boys must generate
their own heat by “play[ing] till [their] bodies
glowed” (Joyce 30).
Introducing
Quotations
1. You can use a complete sentence to introduce a
quote. Put a colon after the complete sentence
(independent clause) before the quote. For example:
•
•
As George Williams notes, protection of white privilege
is critical to patterns of discrimination: “Whenever the
number of persons within society have enjoyed [...]
certain opportunities for wealth [...] there is a strong
tendency for these people to feel that these benefits are
theirs ‘by right’” (727).
*Notice that a quote within a quote goes in single
quote marks (‘by right’).
Introducing
Quotations
2. You can incorporate the quote into your
sentence structure by using a comma after
the introduction (right before the quote).
•
Similarly, Duncan Turner asserts, “As
matters now stand, it is unwise to talk
about communication without some
understanding of Burke” (259).
Introducing
Quotations
3. You can use “that” or “as” to introduce a quote.
Remember: you do not need to capitalize the first word
of a quote if you use this method of introduction.
•
•
Noting this failure, Alice Miller asserts that “the reason
for her despair was not her suffering but the
impossibility of communicating her suffering to another
person” (255).
*Notice that there is no punctuation following the word
“that”.
Integrating
Quotations
1. Quotations should always be surrounded by a
“quote sandwich.”
Introduce the argument that you are trying to
make in a sentence of your own.
Insert the quote appropriately as discussed
above.
Analyze the quote. How does the quote further
an interpretive argument that you are making?
Quote Sandwich
Example:
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Duke Orsino is
portrayed as a stereotypical courtly lover whose love of
Olivia is based more on a desire to be in love, than on
any qualities in Olivia herself. Orsino quips, “If music be
the food of love, play on, / […] /The appetite may sicken
and so die” (1.1.1-3). From the top of the play, Orsino is
portrayed as love sick and puts his sighs into terms of
sickness and death. He relishes in the sad music he
hires his musicians to play as it serves to fuel his overly
dramatic sense of being in love.
Integrating
Quotations
Quotations can be placed in almost any
point within your sentences:
At the beginning:
“To live a life is not to cross a field,”
Sutherland, quoting Pasternak, writes at
the beginning of her narrative (11).
Integrating
Quotations
In the middle:
Woolf begins and ends by speaking of
the need of the woman writer to have
“money and a room of her own” (4)--an
idea that certainly spoke to Plath’s
condition.
Integrating
Quotations
At the end:
In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
describes such an experience as one in
which the girl “becomes an object, and
she sees herself as object” (378).
Integrating
Quotations
Divided by your own words:
“Science usually prefers the literal to the
nonliteral term,” Kinneavy writes, “--that
is, figures of speech are often out of
place in science” (177).
MLA In-Text
Citations
Every time you use quoted material, you
must cite your source in the text following
the quote. How you cite the source
depends on several factors, including the
type of source, and how you have
introduced it in your writing.
Rules for In-Text
Citations
There are two things that must be included
to properly cite information that is not your
own:
The author.
The page number where you found the
quote.
Rules for In-text
Citations
A parenthetical citation for a work with a
single author should look like this: (Smith
27). Smith is the last name of the author,
and page 27 is where you found the quote.
Dr. James is described as a “not too
skeletal Ichabod Crane” (Smith 27).
*Notice that the parenthetical citation
comes after the quotations and before
the period.
Rules for In-text
Citations
If you mentioned the author’s name in your
introduction to the quote, you do not need
to include the author’s name in the
parenthetical citation. You will only include
the page number.
For example: Smith describes Dr. James
as a “not too skeletal Ichabod Crane”
(27).
Rules for In-text
Citations
For works with two or three authors, the names of all
authors must be included in the parenthetical citation:
(Smith, Jones, and Herbert 33).
For works with more than three authors, list only the
first author’s last name followed by et al. (Latin for “and
others”): (Smith et al. 247)
For works with an unknown author, use a shortened
version of the title of the piece, beginning with the word
by which the title is alphabetized in your Works Cited
list: (“Awash” 25). For this example the title of the piece
was “Awash in Garbage”
Citing Internet
Sources In-text
Internet sources often have no author or page numbers and
can therefore be difficult to cite. The rule of thumb is to always
provide as much information as possible so that others can
find the source if they wanted to look at it.
Remember the order of priorities in citing:
Preferred: Author and page number: (Smith 27). If there is
no page number (ie. this is an internet source), but there is
an author, include only the author’s last name: (Smith).
Secondary: If there is no author, use a shortened form of
title and page number: (“Fishing” 14). If there is no page
number, use only a shortened form of the title: (“Fishing”).
Punctuating
Quotations
The citation always comes before the
period. However, if a quote ends in a
question mark or exclamation point, the
special punctuation remains in the quotes
and the citation follows with a period after it
as normal.
Smith asks, “Why are we here?” (27).