What is an in-text, or parenthetical, citation?

Your Name Here

Dr. Stan Diel

MCOM XXXX

XX Month 2020

The Title of Your Paper Goes Here, Centered

Your citations and references need to be done in MLA style. This means that you should

put the last name of the author being cited and the page number of the page being cited in

parentheses at the end of the sentence that includes the information from that source. You must

cite your sources both in the text of your paper and on a works cited page. For example, if this

sentence included information from a Newsweek article by John Doe, the end of the sentence

would look like this (Doe 28). There should not be a comma between the cited author’s name

and the page number. The complete citation must also be included, in alphabetical order, in a

separate works cited section. You can find a sample works cited page at the end of this example

paper.

This is an in-text citation. It tells the reader that the

information in the sentence comes from an article or
paper written by someone whose last name is “Doe,” and
that the information appeared on page 28 of the article
or paper being cited.

A more complete version of this citation must
appear in the works cited section of the paper. See
the next page for examples.


 Works Cited

Doe, John. “Undergraduate students and binge drinking.” Newsweek, vol. 4, No. 2, August 2019, pp.

26-30.

Ebert, Roger. Review of An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim. rogerebert.com, 1

June 2006, www.rogerebert.com/reviews/an-inconvenient-truth-2006. Accessed 15 June 2016.

Gowdy, John and Bill Cunningham. "Avoiding Self-organized Extinction: Toward a Co-

evolutionary Economics of Sustainability." International Journal of Sustainable Development

and World Ecology, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007, pp. 27-36.

Leroux, Marcel. “Global Warming: Myth Or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology.” Springer,

2005.

This is the complete citation for the information from John Doe. Citations on the
Works Cited page are ordered alphabetically and typically include this information:

Last name, first name. “Title of article, paper or book.” Journal or publication in which the

information was published, volume number and number within the volume if

available, date published, pages on which the article appeared.

 Shortcuts for Citations

1. If you are citing an academic paper or study, find its entry in Google Scholar (the academic
version of Google). Example:

Click on the quotation mark icon and the box below will appear.

Choose the citation in the desired style. (MLA in Dr. Diel’s classes.) Copy
the entry and paste it into your works cited page.

2. For citations from other sources, such as newspapers, magazines and books,
the citation generator at https://www.scribbr.com/mla-citation-generator/ might
be helpful.