ENG 101

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WCC Fall 2021

MLA Format Review Handout

In-text Citations:

In-text citations are required when you refer to a specific idea/point from a research

source within the body of your essay. In-text citations should usually take the form of either a

Direct Quote or Paraphrase.

Direct Quote:

A direct quote provides the source’s exact words in the exact order that they appear in the

research source. A direct quote must be enclosed in quotation marks and cite the author’s last

name and page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. If the author’s last name

appears within the sentence, then it does not need to be repeated in the parenthetical citation.

When you use a direct quote, you should weave it into your own sentence.

Example #1 (Okay/Not Great):

“horses deserve the right to vote” (Brooks 235).

Example #2 (Better):

According to Brooks, “horses deserve the right to vote” (235).

Example #3 (Much Better!):

Brooks, a pioneer in the field of animal voting rights, asserts that “horses deserve the right to

vote” (235).

Direct Quote—Additional Examples for 1 Author, 2 Authors, 3 or more Authors:

1 Author:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons quickly became “the biggest launch of any Nintendo Switch

game ever” (Carro 26).

As Carro reports, “Eleven million copies were sold within 11 days of the game's release on

March 20” (26).

2 Authors:

It is important to consider the question of “How much more efficiently could humanity have

addressed climate change if a different pathway had been taken in the past?” (Sanderson and

O’Neill 7).

Sanderson and O’Neill examine “the value of lost time” in the struggle to mitigate climate

change (7).

3 or more Authors:

Furthermore, “plastic pollution can negatively affect ecotourism” (Provencher et al. 1).

Provencher et al. explain that “plastic pollution can negatively affect ecotourism” (1).

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Paraphrase:

When you paraphrase a source, you make the choice to explain the source’s idea/point in

your own words. As a writer, it is your responsibility to make sure that any and all paraphrase is

truly in your own words. If paraphrase is too close to the source’s original sentence structure or

phrasing, then it can be considered plagiarism. Paraphrase, like a direct quote, must be cited by

author’s last name and page number.

Example #1 (Good):

Brooks is an advocate for horse suffrage (235).

Example #2 (Unacceptable, too close to original phrasing):

Horses should have the right to vote (Brooks 235).

Works Cited Entry:

Any research-based essay must include a Works Cited page with an accurate works cited

entry for each of the essay’s research sources. The required information, the order in which it

appears, and how it is formatted varies depending on the type of source.

Thus, a works cited entry for a book, a selection from an edited collection, a newspaper

article, a journal article, etc., will all differ from one another. Consult a guide to MLA format for

detailed explanations, templates, and sample entries. For example, this is the basic template for a

selection from an anthology or edited collection:

Last name, First name. "Title of Article." Title of Collection, edited by Editor's Name(s), edition,

Publisher, Year, Page range of entry.

*See page 3 of this handout for a Sample Works Cited Page.

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Sample Works Cited Page:

This is an example of what a Works Cited page might look like:

Works Cited

Brooks, Eugene. The Importance of Animal Suffrage. Pony Publishing, 2016.

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction,

edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al., shorter 14th ed., W. W. Norton, 2017, pp. 324-332.

Duncan, Mike. “Whatever Happened to the Paragraph?” College English, vol. 69, no. 5,

2007, pp. 470-495, Academic Search Complete. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25472231.

Accessed 28 Aug. 2017.