Citing Sources in the Text
Directory to In-Text-Citation Models
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One author More than one author Unknown author Two or more works by the same author Two or more authors with the same last name Corporation, organization, or government agency as author Literary work (novel, play, poem) Work in an anthology |
Religious work Multivolume work (one volume, more than one volume) Indirect citation (quotation from a secondary source) Entire work Work without page numbers or a one-page work (with/without other section numbers) Two or more works cited in the same parentheses |
One author When citing most works with a single author, include the author’s name (usually the last name is enough)* and the page number on which the cited material appears.
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| PARENTHETICAL CITATION |
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| BLOCK QUOTATION |
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(A works-cited entry for “Birthing” appears on page 709.)
More than one author To cite a source by two or three authors, include all the authors’ last names. To cite a source with four or more authors, model your in-text citation on the entry in your works-cited list: Use either all the authors’ names or just the first author’s name followed by et al. (“and others” in Latin, not italicized).
| SIGNAL PHRASE | Dyal, Corning, and Willows (1975) identify several types of students, including the “Authority-Rebel” (4). |
| PARENTHETICAL CITATION | The Authority-Rebel “tends to see himself as superior to other students in the class” (Dyal, Corning, and Willows 4). |
| The drug AZT has been shown to reduce the risk of transmission from HIV-positive mothers to their infants by as much as two-thirds (Van de Perre et al. 4-5). |
Unknown author If the author’s name is unknown, use a shortened version of the title, beginning with the word by which the title is alphabetized in the works-cited list.
An international pollution treaty still to be ratified would prohibit ships from dumping plastic at sea (“Plastic Is Found” 68).
The full title of the work is “Plastic Is Found in the Sargasso Sea; Pieces of Apparent Refuse Cover Wide Atlantic Region.”
Two or more works by the same author If you cite more than one work by the same author, include a shortened version of the title.
When old paint becomes transparent, it sometimes shows the artist’s original plans: “a tree will show through a woman’s dress” (Hellman, Pentimento 1).
Two or more authors with the same last name When citing works by authors with the same last name, include each author’s first initial in the citation. If the first initials are also the same, spell out the authors’ first names.
Chaplin’s Modern Times provides a good example of montage used to make an editorial statement (E. Roberts 246).
Corporation, organization, or government agency as author In a signal phrase, use the full name of the corporation, organization, or government agency. In a parenthetical citation, use the full name if it is brief or a shortened version if it is long.
| SIGNAL PHRASE | According to the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, a tuition increase . . . from Initiative 601 (4). |
| PARENTHETICAL CITATION | A tuition increase has been proposed for community and technical colleges to offset budget deficits from Initiative 601 (Washington State Board 4). |
Literary work (novel, play, poem) Provide information that will help readers find the passage you are citing no matter what edition of the novel, play, or poem they are using. For a novel or other prose work, provide the part or chapter number as well as the page numbers from the edition you used.
| NOVEL OR OTHER PROSE WORK | In Hard Times, Tom reveals his utter narcissism by blaming Louisa for his own failure: “ ‘You have regularly given me up. You never cared for me’” (Dickens 262; bk. 3, ch. 9). |
For a play in verse, use act, scene, and line numbers instead of page numbers.
| PLAY (IN VERSE) | At the beginning, Regan’s fawning rhetoric hides her true attitude toward Lear: “I profess / myself an enemy to all other joys . . . / And find that I am alone felicitate / In your dear highness’ love” (King Lear 1.1.74-75, 77-78). |
For a poem, indicate the line numbers and stanzas or sections (if they are numbered) instead of page numbers.
| POEM | In “Song of Myself,” Whitman finds poetic details in busy urban settings, as when he describes “the blab of the pave, tires of carts . . . the driver with his interrogating thumb” (8.153-54). |
If the source gives only line numbers, use the term lines in your first citation and use only the numbers in subsequent citations.
In “Before you thought of spring,” Dickinson at first identifies the spirit of spring with a bird, possibly a robin--“A fellow in the skies / Inspiriting habiliments / Of indigo and brown” (lines 4, 7-8)--but by the end of the poem, she has linked it with poetry and perhaps even the poet herself, as the bird, like Dickinson “shouts for joy to nobody / But his seraphic self!” (15-16)
Work in an anthology Use the name of the author of the work, not the editor of the anthology, in your in-text citation.
| SIGNAL PHRASE | In “Six Days: Some Rememberings,” Grace Paley recalls that when she was in jail for protesting the Vietnam War, her pen and paper were taken away and she felt “a terrible pain in the area of my heart--a nausea” (191). |
| PARENTHETICAL CITATION | Writers may have a visceral reaction--“a nausea” (Paley 191)-- to being deprived of access to writing implements. |
Religious work In your first citation, include the element that begins your entry in the works-cited list, such as the edition name of the religious work you are citing, and include the book or section name (using standard abbreviations in parenthetical citations) and any chapter or verse numbers.
She ignored the admonition “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Prov. 16.18).
Multivolume work (one volume, more than one volume) If you cite only one volume of a multivolume work, treat the in-text citation as you would any other work, but include the volume number in the works-cited entry (see p. 719).
| ONE VOLUME | Forster argued that modernist writers valued experimentation and gradually sought to blur the line between poetry and prose (150). |
When you use two or more volumes of a multivolume work, include the volume number and the page number(s) in your in-text citation.
| MORE THAN ONE VOLUME | Modernist writers valued experimentation and gradually sought to blur the line between poetry and prose (Forster 3: 150). |
Indirect citation (quotation from a secondary source) If possible, locate the original source and cite that. If not possible, name the original source but also include the secondary source in which you found the material you are citing, plus the abbreviation qtd. in. Include the secondary source in your list of works cited.
E. M. Forster says, “the collapse of all civilization, so realistic for us, sounded in Matthew Arnold’s ears like a distant and harmonious cataract” (qtd. in Trilling 11).
Entire work Include the reference in the text without any page numbers or parentheses.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn discusses how scientists change their thinking.
Work without page numbers or a one-page work (with/without other section numbers) If a work (such as a Web page) has no page numbers or is only one page long, omit the page number. If it uses screen numbers or paragraph numbers, insert a comma after the author’s name, an identifying term (such as screen) or abbreviation (par. or pars.), and the number.
| WITHOUT PAGE OR OTHER NUMBERS | The average speed on Montana’s interstate highways, for example, has risen by only 2 miles per hour since the repeal of the federal speed limit, with most drivers topping out at 75 (Schmid). |
| WITH OTHER SECTION NUMBERS | Whitman considered African American speech “a source of a native grand opera” (Ellison, par. 13). |
Two or more works cited in the same parentheses If you cite two or more sources for a piece of information, include them in the same parentheses, separated by semicolons.
A few studies have considered differences between oral and written discourse production (Scardamalia, Bereiter, and Goelman; Gould).
If the parenthetical citation is likely to prove disruptive for your reader, cite multiple sources in a footnote or an end note.