MLA Style Guide

To avoid plagiarism, you must also indicate in the text of the paper exactly what you have taken from a source and where to locate that information in a source. When you use an original idea from one of your sources, whether you quote, summarize or paraphrase it, you must use in-text citation to credit your source. In-text citations appear in parentheses, usually at the end of a sentence, and correspond directly with an entry in your Works Cited.

In-text citations, also called parenthetical references, do the following:

• allow your reader to know which source each idea/fact came from
• give you credibility as a writer
• protect you from plagiarism
• point your reader to the proper entry in your Works Cited.

You will always need to cite your source when you use:

A direct quote from a source

EXAMPLE: Doctor Who "has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series" (Smith 43).

A paraphrase or summary of a source's ideas

EXAMPLE: Much of Britain's television continues to be impacted by Doctor Who to this day, as many of those who are employed by television stations cite Doctor Who as a major influence (Smith 43).

A specific figure or number, which will often be:

• Statistics

EXAMPLE: About 38% of the Doctor Who episodes made in the 1960s are not available in the BBC Archives (Smith 42).

• Exact numbers

EXAMPLE: By the 1990s, Doctor Who episodes had set the precedent that a Time Lord can regenerate, or come back to life in a new physical form, no more than 12 times, meaning that we could have 13 different actors (or actresses) play a single Doctor (Smith 42).

You have two choices as to how you credit an author in the body of your essay.

• Choice 1: Introduce the author before his or her quotation, and include the page number(s) in parentheses at the end of the sentence. The period follows the parenthesis because the in-text citation is considered part of the sentence.

EXAMPLE:  As Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, journalist and author, notes, “It was only when there was nothing else left--when there was no income, education, shelter, food, or safety--that people put themselves and their families in a boat and took that last gamble” (3).

• Choice 2: Include the author’s name with the parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase.

EXAMPLE:  While most people wanted to remain in a familiar culture, hopeful to be able to return home eventually, “it was only when there was nothing else left--when there was no income, education, shelter, food, or safety--that people put themselves and their families in a boat and took that last gamble” (McDonald-Gibson 3).