Citing Sources Within Your Paper

Whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or otherwise refer to the work of another, you are required to cite its source, either by way of parenthetical documentation or by means of a footnote.
For types of documents not exemplified here, please consult the appropriate style manual available in the library's reference collection.

MLA: In-text Parenthetical Citations

The Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines require that you cite the quotations, summaries, paraphrases, and other material used from sources within parentheses. These citations are typically placed at the end of the sentence in which the quoted or paraphrased material appears. The parenthetical method replaces the use of citational footnotes. These in-text parenthetical citations correspond to the full bibliographic entries found in a list of references at the end of your paper. (Note that the titles of works are underlined rather than placed in italics.)

Single author named in parentheses:

The tendency to come to terms with difficult experiences is referred to as a "purification process" whereby "threatening or painful dissonances are warded off to preserve intact a clear and articulated image of oneself and one's place in the world" (Sennett 11).

Single author named in a signal phrase:

Social historian Richard Sennett names the tendency to come to terms with difficult experiences a "purification process" whereby "threatening or painful dissonances are warded off to preserve intact a clear and articulated image of oneself and one's place in the world" (11).

Two or more authors:

Certain literacy theorists have gone so far as to declare that "the most significant elements of human culture are undoubtedly channeled through words, and reside in the particular range of meanings and attitudes which members of any society attach to their verbal symbols" (Goody and Watt 323).

Corporate author (organization, association, etc.):

The federal government has funded research concerning consumer protection and consumer transactions with online pharmacies (Food and Drug Administration 125).

Works with no author:

Several critics of the concept of the transparent society ask if a large society would be able to handle the complete loss of privacy ("Surveillance Society" 115).

Two or more works by the same author:

In his investigation of social identity, The Uses of Disorder , Sennett defines adulthood as a stage where people "learn to tolerate painful ambiguity and uncertainty" (108).

In a surprising move, Richard Sennett combines the idea of power with that of virtue: "the idea of strength is complex in ordinary life because of what might be called the element of its integrity" ( Authority 19).

Work found in an anthology or edited collection:

(For an essay, short story, or other document included in an anthology or edited collection, use the name of the author of the work, not the editor of the anthology or collection, but use the page numbers from the anthology or collection).

Lawrence Rosenfield analyzes the way in which New York's Central Park held a socializing function for nineteenth-century residents similar to that of traditional republican civic oratory (222).

Bible passage:

Unfortunately, the president could not recall the truism that "Wisdom is a fountain to one who has it, but folly is the punishment of fools" ( New Oxford Annotated Bible , Prov. 20-22).

Secondary source of a quotation (someone quoted within the text of another author):

As Erickson reminds us, the early psychoanalysts focused on a single objective: "introspective honesty in the service of self enlightenment" (qtd. in Weiland 42).

APA: In-text Parenthetical Citations

The American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines require that you use parenthetical citations to document quotations, paraphrases, summaries, and other material from a source used in your paper. These in-text citations correspond to the full bibliographic entries found in a list of references included at the end of your paper.

Single author named in a signal phrase.:

(Use the author's name in a signal phrase to introduce the quoted material, and place the date of the work in parentheses, immediately after the author's name. For a quotation, the page number, preceded by p., appears in parentheses after the quotation).

Social historian Richard Sennett (1980) names the tendency to come to terms with difficult experiences, a "purification process" whereby "threatening or painful dissonances are warded off to preserve intact a clear and articulated image of oneself and one's place in the world" (p. 11).

Single author named in parentheses:

(When you do not mention the author in a signal phrase, give the name and the date, separated by a comma, in parentheses at the end of the cited material).

Two authors:

Goody and Watt (1963) have gone so far as to declare that "the most significant elements of human culture are undoubtedly channeled through words, and reside in the particular range of meanings and attitudes which members of any society attach to the verbal symbols" (p. 323).

Three to five authors.:

(List all the authors names for the first reference).

Kintgen, Kroll, and Rose (1988) maintain that "just as a single definition of literacy is insufficient, so is scrutiny from within the confines of a single academic discipline" (p. xv).

(In subsequent references, use just the first author's name plus et al.).

In assessing the educational quality of our schools, it is important to remember that, as Kintgen et al. (1988) explain: "the contemporary asymmetry between reading and writing can be related to use in a particular socioeconomic context" (p. xvii).

Six or more authors:

As Williams et al. (1999) demonstrated, the internet holds the potential to open consumer markets in new and unexpected ways.

Corporate author (organization, association, etc.)

(If the name of the organization or association is long, spell it out the first time, followed by an abbreviation in brackets. In later citations, use the abbreviation only).

FIRST CITATION (Food and Drug Administration [FDA], 1996)

LATER CITATION (FDA, 1996)

Works with no author:

Several critics of the concept of the transparent society ask if a large society would be able to handle the complete loss of privacy ("Surveillance Society," 1998, p. 115).

Bible passage:

Unfortunately, the president could not recall the truism found in Prov. 20-22 that "Wisdom is a fountain to one who has it, but folly is the punishment of fools" (New Oxford Annotated Bible).

Turabian: Footnotes

Footnoting is the method for documenting quotations, paraphrases, summaries, and other material offered in your paper as required by Kate A. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Terms Papers, Theses, and Dissertations . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (known simply as "Turabian"). Footnotes are listed serially at the bottom of the page, preceded by superscript numerals ( 1 Twain, Mark); Endnotes are listed serially at the end of the paper, preceded by a regular typed numeral, followed by a period (1. Twain, Mark). (Note that when using superscript footnotes, the first line of the citation is indented 5 spaces).

Book with a single author:

⁵Richard Sennett, Authority (New York: Norton, 1980), 11.

Book with two or three authors:

¹²Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 123.

Book with three or more authors:

⁸Martin Greenberger et al., eds., Networks for Research and Education: Sharing of Computer Information Resources Nationwide (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974), 54.

Author's work prepared by an editor or translator:

¹³Edward Chiera, They Wrote on Clay, ed. George G. Cameron (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 42.
²²Habermas, Jurgen, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 173.

Corporate author (organization, association)

⁷Food and Drug Administration, FDA and the Internet: Advertising and Promotion of Medical Products (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), 324.

Works with no author:

²⁰"The Surveillance Society: Information Technology as a Threat to Privacy," The Economist, 1 May 1999, 21.

Author's work contained in Collected Works:

⁷John Dewey, The Philosophy of John Dewey. ed. John J. McDermott, "Culture and Nature" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 689-714.

¹⁵M. M. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of History, 2d ed. Harvard Economic Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), 89.

Reprint of a book:

²¹Michael David, Toward Honesty in Public Relations (Chicago: Condor Publications, 1968; reprint, New York: B. Y. Jove, 1990), 134-56. (page citations are to the reprint edition).

Secondary source of a quotation (another writer quoted by an author):

¹⁴Erik H. Ericson, Childhood and Society, 2^nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1963), 113; quoted in Steven Wieland, Intellectual Craftsmen: Ways and Works in American Scholarship, 1935-1990 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991), 42.

Article in a journal:

¹⁸David Beard, "Rhetorical Criticism, Holocaust Studies, and the Problem of Ethos," Journal of Advanced Composition, 20 (Fall 2000): 733.

Article in a magazine:

³Atul Gawande, "The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating," The New Yorker, 9 July 2001, 67.

Signed article in an encyclopedia:

²²Williamson, Thomas, "Commonplaces," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, ed. Thomas O. Sloane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001): 132.

Signed article in a newspaper:

⁶Tom Brune, "Census Will for First Time Count Those of Mixed Race," Seattle Times, 6 Oct. 1999, sec. 1A, p. 3.

Work included within an edited collection:

²³Carl F. Kaestle, "The History of Literacy and the History of Readers," in Perspectives on Literacy, ed. Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose (Carbondale, Il: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 122.

Published interview:

³⁵Judith Butler, "Changing the Subject: Judith Butler's Politics of Radical Resignification," interview by Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham (Tampa, Fl., 22 Jan. 2000), Journal of Advanced Composition, 20 (Fall 2000): 733.

Unpublished interview:

²⁷Walker Percy, interview by Anne James, 13 April 1983, interview 77B, transcript, Louisiana Oral History Collection, Loyola University, New Orleans, La.

Chicago Manual of Style

For information about citing sources within your paper according to the Chicago Manual of Style, please consult that guide directly. Documentation methods differ according to subject discipline, and some rules are complex. A copy of the Chicago Manual of Style is available in Belk Library Reference Desk. Copies are available for purchase in the campus bookstore.