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MLA IN-TEXT EXAMPLES

Don’t forget the Main Purpose of In-Text Citation:

To show the reader where to look in the bibliography for more information about the source.

(An additional purpose could be to give the page number, if the source has page numbers.)

For any single sentence in your paper with information or words from a source, you only need one citation. Do NOT have in a single sentence a citation in signal phrase AND in parentheses after the information.

AUTHOR NAME IN SIGNAL PHRASE

1ST mention, use the full name:

Charles Johnson pointed out that clients who seek out mediums are so inclined to find the sessions impressive that “few can blame them for leaving the consultation expressing unequivocal satisfaction.”

Subsequent mentions, you can use the last name:

Johnson pointed out that clients who seek out mediums are so inclined to find the sessions impressive that “few can blame them for leaving the consultation expressing unequivocal satisfaction.”

AUTHOR NAME IN PARENTHESES

Last name only always:

Mediums claiming to communicate with the dead were aided at the end of the twentieth century by mass media exposure and a credulous American public (Kurtz).

ARTICLE TITLE IN SIGNAL PHRASE

Full title, in quote marks:

“Talking to the Dead” claimed that the medium used “a sophisticated form of the game Twenty Questions, during which the subject, anxious to hear from the dead, seldom realizes that he, not the medium or the departed, is supplying the answers.”

ARTICLE TITLE IN PARENTHESES

Short, first word version of title in quote marks:

Some claim that psychics use techniques of suggestion that get the subject to provide the answers that are supposedly coming from the dead person (“Talking”).