Individual Author Not Named in Sentence

Place the author’s last name in parentheses, right after the source information, to keep readers focused on the sequence and content of your sentences.

Individual Author Named in Sentence

Name the author in your sentence, perhaps with credentials or experience, to capitalize on the persuasive value of the author’s “expert” status.

Two or Three Authors

Include each author’s last name either in your sentence or in parentheses.

Ferriter and Toibin note Irish historical objectivity about the famine (5).

Irish historians tend to report the famine dispassionately (Ferriter and Toibin 5).

Four Authors or More

Name all the authors, or follow the first with “et al.” (Latin abbreviation for “and others”). Identify the source the same way in your list of works cited.

Between 1870 and 1900, cities grew at an astonishing rate (Roark et al. 671).

Organization Author

If a source is sponsored by a corporation, a professional society, or another group, name the sponsor as the author if no one else is specified.

Each year, the Kids Count program (Annie E. Casey Foundation) alerts children’s advocates about the status of children in their state.

Author of an Essay from a Reader or Collection

Suppose you consulted Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” in a collection edited by Wendy Martin. You’d cite Tan as the author, not Martin, and begin your Works Cited entry with Tan’s name.

Tan explains the “Englishes” of her childhood and family (32).

Unidentified Author

For a source with an unknown author, supply the complete title in your sentence or the first main word or two of the title in parentheses.

Due to download codes and vinyl’s beauty, album sales are up (“Back to Black” 1).

Same Author with Multiple Works

If you are citing several of an author’s works, the author’s name alone won’t identify which one you mean. Add the title, or identify it with a few key words. For example, you would cite two books by Bill McKibben, Deep Economy and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, as follows.

McKibben cites advocates of consistent economic expansion (Deep Economy 10) yet calls growth “the one big habit we finally must break” (Eaarth 48).

Different Authors of Multiple Works

Separate more than one source in parentheses with a semicolon. For easy reading, favor shorter, separate references, not long strings of sources.

Ray Charles and Quincy Jones worked together for many years and maintained a strong friendship throughout Charles’s life (Jones 58-59; Lydon 386).