Brackets allow you to insert your own words into quoted material. You can insert words in brackets to explain a confusing reference or to keep a sentence grammatical in your context.
Legal scholar Jay Kesan notes that “a decade ago, losses [from employees’ computer crimes] were already mounting to five billion dollars annually” (311).
To indicate an error such as a misspelling in a quotation, insert [sic] after the error.
Johnson argues that “while online monitoring is often imagined as harmles [sic], the practice may well threaten employees’ rights to privacy” (14).
If you use [sic] to indicate an error in your quoted source, be very certain that it truly is an error and that you know the correct form.
Exercise: Integrating sources in MLA papers 1
Exercise: Integrating sources in MLA papers 2
Exercise: Integrating sources in MLA papers 3
Exercise: Integrating sources in MLA papers 4