Lakewood High School

English Department

There are two main sections to the module:

1. Introduction to In-Text Citations and various styles
2. How to create MLA In-Text Citations

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You can stop at any time in this module until the quiz is started.

You can retake this module as often as you like. 

After taking this module, you will be able to do the following:

1. State the reason for citations and then identify differences in the APA, MLA, and Turabian styles.
2. Create in-text citations in MLA style.

These learning objectives are derived from the Jefferson County Pacing Guides 5.a and 5.b.

A citation is a reference to another work. These can be books, articles, web sites, and other sources. Using citations gives proper credit for someone's work and protects you from committing plagiarism.

A works cited page provides details for citations and appears at the end of an essay. Creating works cited pages is covered in another module.

Citations are placed in the body of the text where your reference or quote is shown. You will need the author's name and the page number of the specific quote, statistics, or detail.

There are four primary reasons to use citations:

1. Distinguish your work, research, and ideas from others' work.
2. Provide a foundation of previous research for your new work and ideas.
3. Provide a way for readers to find the original source for more extensive research.
4. Protect yourself from plagiarism.

Important: If something you write about is not your idea, you must give credit and state whose idea it is in the actual essay (i.e., a citation).

Citations are used in any writing assignment where you show ideas that are not your own. This includes essays, poetry analysis, chemistry papers, and history reviews.

There are two situations where you will use citations.

1. You may use direct quotes from a source to help illustrate a point in an essay.
2. You may paraphrase an idea from another person in your work. Even if you paraphrase or rewrite something, you must cite the original source.

Note that any material found on the Internet must also be cited in your essays.

There are three styles of citation used at Lakewood High School.

MLA (Modern Language Association)

• Humanities and Social Studies including English

Chicago/Turabian from Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed., 1996.

• History

APA (American Psychological Association)

• Science, psychology

MLA

Twain's characters Huck and Jim become friends even though race was an initial barrier (321).

Huck becomes friends with Jim even though race was an initial barrier (Twain 321).

APA

Twain's characters Huck and Jim become friends even though race was an initial barrier (1884).

Huck becomes friends with Jim even though race was an initial barrier (Twain, 1884).

Chicago/Turabian

Twain's characters Huck and Jim become friends even though race is an initial barrier.¹

¹ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884, (London: Penguin Books, 2008).

• A citation is a reference to another work in your essay, poem, or other assignment.

• There are four primary reasons to use citations:

1. Distinguish your work, research, and ideas from others' work.
2. Provide a foundation of previous research for your new work and ideas.
3. Provide a way for readers to find the original source for more extensive research
4. Protect you from committing plagiarism.

MLA In-text citations are used for all humanities classes including English at Lakewood High School. The following slides provide examples of the most common citations and the correct style for each.

The examples will show you how to cite books, electronic sources, and poems. To see examples of other sources, use the Resources link.

1. Support your points with specific lines and passages from the book.
2. When using the exact words from an author, place quotation marks around these passages. 
3. When paraphrasing or summarizing an author's ideas or points, you place the author's name and page number after your paraphrase or summary.

Socrates, whom the Oracle at Delphi claimed to be the wisest man in the world, had an irritating way of questioning people and stating that he himself knew nothing. Socrates was often attacked verbally for this behavior, which is portrayed in The Republic. Plato has one of his characters, Thrasymachus, point this out:  "The irony of Socrates. I predicted it. I told these people you would refuse to give any answers, that you'd pretend to be modest, that you'd do anything to avoid answering, if anyone asked you a question" (Plato 14).  Socrates sought to have people look deeper into abstract ideas that thought they knew, such as Justice, encourage people to think critically and understand ideas from a variety of perspectives. This method of questioning, though annoying, has led to the Socratic seminars that are used in classrooms today.

1. Support your points with specific lines and passages from the source.
2. When using the exact words from an author, place quotation marks around these passages. Cite the source in parentheses, and place the period after the citation.
3. When paraphrasing or summarizing an author's ideas or points, you place the author's name and page number after the material you are using.
4. Electronic sources include web pages, online encyclopedia, blogs, online journals, online periodicals, and even emails.

John O'Callaghan of the Washington Post identified the heart of this moral dilemma: "The decision appeared to end a case that has gripped Britain, polarized the medical profession and church leaders, and presented judges with an unprecedented and harrowing ethical quandary" (Callaghan).

Note:  No page number is included because there is no actual number on this Internet source.

If the twins are separated, Mary will die during the operation. The procedure will involve clamping and then severing the common artery. Within a few minutes of doing so, Mary will die. However, Jodie should be able to sustain a worthwhile life ("Case No:B1").

Note: Because this is a summary, no quotation marks are used.  No author is available for this article, so a shortened version of the title is used.  Notice the quotation marks around the title "Case No:B1" to indicate that it is the title of an article.

1. Support your points with specific lines and passages from the poems. 
2. Place quotation marks around these passages to indicate they are the author's exact works. 
3. Use a slash to indicate the end of a poetic line.
4. Use a parenthetical citation following the quote for MLA Style. The period is placed after the citation (rather than after the quote).
5. Cite the author (if not obvious from the context of your sentences) and the line number of the poem. You may also need to cite the title of the poem (in quotation marks) if you are citing from more than one poem by the same poet.
6. Put the line numbers from the poem.

"I love thee with the passion put to use/ In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith" (Browning, "Sonnet 43" 9-10).

"I love thee with the passion put to use/ In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith" (Browning, "Sonnet 43"9-10).

The slash indicates the end of a poetic line.

The author.

The title of the poem (in quotation marks) when citing from more than one poem by the same poet.

Line numbers from the poem.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" (Browning 1) reveals the focus of love in many of the poems by the British Romantic poets.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" (Browning1) reveals the focus of love in many of the poems by the British Romantic poets.

The author when it is not in the text.

Line number from the poem.

The speaker in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" proudly asserts his status by complaining to his visitor that his previous wife did not seem to appreciate his social status: "as if she ranked/ My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name/ With anybody's gift" (32-34).

The speaker in Robert Browning's"My Last Duchess" proudly asserts his status by complaining to his visitor that his previous wife did not seem to appreciate his social status: "as if she ranked/ My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name/ With anybody's gift" (32-34).

The author.

The title of the poem (in quotation marks) when discussing the poem by name.

The colon is used to connect the supporting quote to your sentence.

The slash indicates the end of a poetic line.

Line numbers from the poem.

For MLA style, when a quote is more than four lines long, turn it into a block quote. Here are several rules to follow:

• Indent the quote 5 to 10 spaces on both sides.
• Because the quote is set off with indentations, no quotation marks are used.
• Ellipses (. . . .) are used in quotations to indicate when words are left out. This should only be done if it does not change the author's meaning or intention. Note: Ellipses are occasionally used in fiction, as in this case, to indicate a pause in time or thought.
• The single quotation marks used in this example would be used for quotes or dialogue within a normal quotation. However, quotes within block quotes generally use double quotation marks since there are no quotation marks at the beginning and end of the quotation when it is indented. In this case, single quotes are used because that is how they were used in the original text.
• Author's name is not cited with the page numbers because the author and title were introduced at the beginning of the paragraph.
• One other subtle change to observe is where the period is placed at the end of the quotation. Generally the period is placed after the citation; however, in a block quote the end punctuation comes at the end of the sentence before the citation.
• The paragraph continues after the block quote at the left margin: it is not indented. Follow up comments are important to analyze how the quote (which serves as part of the supporting evidence) supports the point introduced at the beginning of the sentence for P.E.A. (point, evidence, analysis.

Feminism in Charlotte Perkin Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is encrypted within the plot.  The woman behind the pattern of the yellow wallpaper is a metaphor for all women trapped within the restrictions of the social order. This is made clear when the narrator begins to rip off all the paper and releases the woman from the patterns on the paper. In reality, she releases herself from the constrictions of society and society's implication that she needs to mold herself into the ideal nineteenth century wife:

This passage signifies that the woman who lived in the house had always symbolically been the woman trapped behind the wallpaper.

You have completed the module on Introduction to In-text Citations and MLA Style.

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