MLA Directory of Variations to In-Text Formatting Rules

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1. Citing an Unknown Author

Format:
In cases where you are citing an anonymous source, or a source for which the author is unknown, use a shortened version of the title. It is important that the shortened title you use points your reader to the appropriate entry in the works cited list. For this reason, you will probably want to include the word in the full title which determines how that title is alphabetized in the works cited list. Also make sure that you punctuate the shortened title appropriately, as with the article title in the example below.

Example:

One anonymous review, appearing in the New York Times Book Review, boldly asserted that "Mrs. Peterkin of South Carolina is one of the first to write a book unaffectedly about negroes, without conscious or unconscious belittling mockery in view of superior white advancement" ("Again" 122).

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2. Citing Web or Internet Sources

Format:
When you cite an Internet Source, you need only to use the last name of the author (or the shortened title, if the source is anonymous). Since most sources from the Internet or Web are not paginated in the same way that print sources are, you may forgo the use of page numbers.

Example:

These types of information are indispensable when citing electronic sources (Walker).

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3. Citing Author Appearing More than Once in Works Cited

Format:
When you are working with more than one source by the same author in your paper, you need to make sure that you specify which source you are using by citing the shortened version of the title along with the author's name. In a case like this, you do use punctuation, placing a comma between the author's name and the shortened title, but just a space between the shortened title and the page numbers.

Example:

But he ends his article with a tactful, diplomatic suggestion that "the exploration of Negro life and character rather than its exploitation must come from Negro authors themselves" (Brown, "Character" 203).

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4. Citing Two or More Authors with Same Last Name in Works Cited

Format:
When your works cited list includes sources written by two (or more) different authors with the same last name, you will need to specify the author's name by including a first initial. (In cases where the authors share the first initial as well, you will need to cite full first names.)

Example:

He asserts that this Creole language has been in use for four centuries in the area (R. Smith 67).

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5. Citing Sources with Two or Three Authors

Format:
When you are using a source written by two or three authors cite the last names of all of the authors, being sure to write the names in the same order in the corresponding works cited entry.

Example:

The Gullah Creole was situated in the middle of this debate (Stoney and Shelby 2).

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6. Citing Sources with More Than Three Authors

Format:
When you are using a source written by more than three authors, cite the last name of the first author listed on the source and then insert the abbreviation "et al." (Latin for "and others") in the place of the following names.

Example:

This theory was, however, tremendously controversial (Wilder et al. 42).

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7. Citing Sources with Corporate Authors

The term "corporate author" refers to groups of people who are responsible for producing documents, whether they be commissions, associations, committees, organizations, or any other like group. When a corporate author (like "American Medical Association") is named on a title page of a work, no individual authors are normally given. The name of a corporate author is treated just like the name of an individual author in the works cited list. See below for the format for parenthetical documentation when citing corporate authors.

Format:
MLA suggests that writers incorporate the name of the corporate author into the sentence in order to avoid having an overly lengthy parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence. (However, including the name in parentheses is allowable as well.)

Example:

The grant proposal submitted by Bas Bleu Theatre Company reflects this need (17).

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8. Citing an Indirect "Second-hand" Source

Format:
Remember that you can't treat a source like you have it in hand unless you actually have it in hand (or the electronic equivalent of "in hand," of course). If you want to cite an idea or quote which one of your sources uses, you need to indicate that this is a "second-hand" source by showing in your citation that this information is quoted in (qtd. in) the source you actually have in hand.

Example:

Julia Peterkin, for instance, envisioned the black folk as sufferers in "a patient struggle with fate, and not in any race conflict at all" (qtd. in Clark 219).

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9. Citing Sources with Multiple Volumes

Format:
When you are citing a multivolume source, be sure to indicate in the parentheses which particular volume you are citing.

Example:

In ancient times, astrological predictions were sometimes used as a kind of black magic (Sarton 2: 319).

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10. Citing Novels and Short Stories

Format:
When citing literary works, it is often necessary to include books, numbers, chapter numbers, verses, lines, acts, scenes, or other appropriate section types.

Example:

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens describes the aptly named Stryver, who "had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life" (110; bk. 2, ch. 4).

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11. Citing Plays

Format:
When citing literary works, it is often necessary to include books, numbers, chapter numbers, verses, lines, acts, scenes, or other appropriate section types.

Example:

Taking on such an "unladylike" project as the representation of Love, Iago says, "is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will" (Othello 1.3.326).

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12. Citing Poems

Format:
When citing literary works, it is often necessary to include books, numbers, chapter numbers, verses, lines, acts, scenes, or other appropriate section types.

Example:

"The world is too much with us; late and soon/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers" (lines 1-2).

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13. Citing Two or More Authors Contributing to a Fact or Idea

Format:
If you wish to cite two or more authors as contributors to a particular idea you are using in your paper, you may cite both names as you normally would in the parentheses. Simply separate them with a semicolon.

Example:

However, African American scholars have normally suggested just the opposite (Brown 15-16; Turner 80-87). " up to Menu

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14. Citing an Entire Work

Format:
When referring to an entire work like a book, study, or article (rather than to a specific part of the work), it is best to paraphrase the information being used. This way, the author's name (or the name of the work, if it is anonymous), is mentioned in the sentence, but there is no need for particular documentation at the end of the sentence.

Example:

Turner's study served to redirect radically the discourse on Gullah that had developed to that point.

Note: Even though there is no formal parenthetical documentation here, Turner's work should appear in the works cited list.

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MLA Directory of Variations to In-Text Formatting Rules