MLA: Quoting and In-text Citations

1. MLA: Quoting and In-text Citations • Professor Yvonne Flack • Wednesday February 20, 2013 • WRC Workshop

2. MLA Rules for Quoting • 1. A quotation is NEVER a sentence of its own. You must always integrate the quote into your own words. • a. For example…your paper should never look like this: • I am writing about Twelfth Night. “A virtuous maid” (1.2.34). • b. Your paper should look like this: • I am writing about Twelfth Night. The captain describes Viola as “[a] virtuous maid” (1.2.34). • I am writing about Twelfth Night. The Captain says, “A virtuous maid” (1.2.34).

3. MLA Rules for Quoting • 2. In almost all situations, you should capitalize the first word of a quotation. • a. Exception: If you use “that” or “as” to introduce the quote, DO NOT capitalize first word of the quote

4. MLA Rules for Quoting • 3. The parenthetical in-text citation comes after the quotation marks, but before the period. • 4. Quotations should be copied exactly as they appear in the original. If there is a spelling or other sort of error in the original, copy it exactly as it is and insert [sic] after the error inside the quote.

5. MLA Rules for Quoting • 5. Quotations that take up more than 4 typed lines must take the form of a block quotation. Indent the quotation an inch (ten character spaces) from the left margin. Omit the quotation marks for block quotes. The parenthetical citation comes after the punctuation with block quotes. See the example below: • In “A Literacy Legacy from Dunbar to Baraka,” Margaret Walker says of Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s dialect poems: He realized that the white world in the United States tolerated his literary genius only because of his “jingles in a broken tongue,” and they found the old “darky” tales and speech amusing and within the vein of folkloreinto which they wished to classify all Negro life. This troubled Dunbar because he realized that white America was denigrating him as a writer and as a man. (70)

6. Modifying Quotes • You may modify quotes for 4 purposes: • #1: To emphasize particular words through italics. When using italics to emphasize certain words, add the phrase “emphasis added” into your parenthetical citation. For example: (Smith 14; emphasis added)

7. Modifying Quotes • #2: To omit irrelevant information. Whenever you remove information from the middle of a quote, indicate the removal by inserting ellipses inside brackets: [...] • #3: To insert information necessary for clarity. Include the extra information inside brackets: [ ]

8. Modifying Quotes • #4: To make the quotation conform grammatically to your sentence. Again, all additions, insertions or modifications must be contained within brackets to indicate that they were not part of the original quote. • For example: The original quote reads: “we played till our bodies glowed” • The quoted version: The boys must generate their own heat by “play[ing] till [their] bodies glowed” (Joyce 30).

9. Introducing Quotations • 1. You can use a complete sentence to introduce a quote. Put a colon after the complete sentence (independent clause) before the quote. For example: • As George Williams notes, protection of white privilege is critical to patterns of discrimination: “Whenever the number of persons within society have enjoyed [...] certain opportunities for wealth [...] there is a strong tendency for these people to feel that these benefits are theirs ‘by right’” (727). • *Notice that a quote within a quote goes in single quote marks (‘by right’).

10. Introducing Quotations • 2. You can incorporate the quote into your sentence structure by using a comma after the introduction (right before the quote). • Similarly, Duncan Turner asserts, “As matters now stand, it is unwise to talk about communication without some understanding of Burke” (259).

11. Introducing Quotations • 3. You can use “that” or “as” to introduce a quote. Remember: you do not need to capitalize the first word of a quote if you use this method of introduction. • Noting this failure, Alice Miller asserts that “the reason for her despair was not her suffering but the impossibility of communicating her suffering to another person” (255). • *Notice that there is no punctuation following the word “that”.

12. Integrating Quotations • 1. Quotations should always be surrounded by a “quote sandwich.” • Introduce the argument that you are trying to make in a sentence of your own. • Insert the quote appropriately as discussed above. • Analyze the quote. How does the quote further an interpretive argument that you are making?

13. Quote Sandwich Example: • In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Duke Orsino is portrayed as a stereotypical courtly lover whose love of Olivia is based more on a desire to be in love, than on any qualities in Olivia herself. Orsino quips, “If music be the food of love, play on, / […] /The appetite may sicken and so die” (1.1.1-3). From the top of the play, Orsino is portrayed as love sick and puts his sighs into terms of sickness and death. He relishes in the sad music he hires his musicians to play as it serves to fuel his overly dramatic sense of being in love.

14. Integrating Quotations • Quotations can be placed in almost any point within your sentences: • At the beginning: • “To live a life is not to cross a field,” Sutherland, quoting Pasternak, writes at the beginning of her narrative (11).

15. Integrating Quotations • In the middle: • Woolf begins and ends by speaking of the need of the woman writer to have “money and a room of her own” (4)--an idea that certainly spoke to Plath’s condition.

16. Integrating Quotations • At the end: • In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir describes such an experience as one in which the girl “becomes an object, and she sees herself as object” (378).

17. Integrating Quotations • Divided by your own words: • “Science usually prefers the literal to the nonliteral term,” Kinneavy writes, “--that is, figures of speech are often out of place in science” (177).

18. MLA In-Text Citations • Every time you use quoted material, you must cite your source in the text following the quote. How you cite the source depends on several factors, including the type of source, and how you have introduced it in your writing.

19. Rules for In-Text Citations • There are two things that must be included to properly cite information that is not your own: • The author. • The page number where you found the quote.

20. Rules for In-text Citations • A parenthetical citation for a work with a single author should look like this: (Smith 27). Smith is the last name of the author, and page 27 is where you found the quote. • Dr. James is described as a “not too skeletal Ichabod Crane” (Smith 27). • *Notice that the parenthetical citation comes after the quotations and before the period.

21. Rules for In-text Citations • If you mentioned the author’s name in your introduction to the quote, you do not need to include the author’s name in the parenthetical citation. You will only include the page number. • For example: Smith describes Dr. James as a “not too skeletal Ichabod Crane” (27).

22. Rules for In-text Citations • For works with two or three authors, the names of all authors must be included in the parenthetical citation: (Smith, Jones, and Herbert 33). • For works with more than three authors, list only the first author’s last name followed by et al. (Latin for “and others”): (Smith et al. 247) • For works with an unknown author, use a shortened version of the title of the piece, beginning with the word by which the title is alphabetized in your Works Cited list: (“Awash” 25). For this example the title of the piece was “Awash in Garbage”

23. Citing Internet Sources In-text • Internet sources often have no author or page numbers and can therefore be difficult to cite. The rule of thumb is to always provide as much information as possible so that others can find the source if they wanted to look at it. • Remember the order of priorities in citing: • Preferred: Author and page number: (Smith 27). If there is no page number (ie. this is an internet source), but there is an author, include only the author’s last name: (Smith). • Secondary: If there is no author, use a shortened form of title and page number: (“Fishing” 14). If there is no page number, use only a shortened form of the title: (“Fishing”).

24. Punctuating Quotations • The citation always comes before the period. However, if a quote ends in a question mark or exclamation point, the special punctuation remains in the quotes and the citation follows with a period after it as normal. • Smith asks, “Why are we here?” (27).