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Cite MLA Style 9

How to cite according to the 9th edition of the Modern Language Association.

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How to make in text citations, long or short quotations, quotations for plays, prose, poetry and how to paraphrase. 

Quotations & Block Quotes

Quotations with less then fours lines will be in the regular text of you paper, with double quotations. Right after the last quotation mark include your in text citation with authors last name and page number within parenthesis.

Example

She stated, “The ‘placebo effect’ . . . disappeared when behaviors were studied in this manner” (Miele 276), but she did not clarify which behaviors were studied.

MLA requires that any quotation over four lines be started on a new line, indented 1 inch from the margin, double spaced without quotation marks. At the end of the block quote include your in text citation with authors last name and page number within parenthesis.

Example

Not to belabor the chicken-and-egg question, but what accounts for this situation? Is it merely the conventional privileging of plot in mainstream cinema and television alike that is responsible for both the supersession of original-language Shakespeare and the avoidance of substitute dialogue that might itself be construed as too literary or inventive? Is this supersession rather the predictable by-product of the accelerated displacement of language by image in contemporary visual media in general, a process that began more than one hundred years ago with the advent of silent filming. (Cartelli 29)

MLA requires that any quotation over four lines be started on a new line, indented 1 inch from the margin, double spaced without quotation marks, essentially a block quote.

Here's how

Once you have typed in the text you want for your block quote, hit enter before the first word of the quote and after the last word of the quote. Highlight the text Right click and select paragraph Under indent change left to 1".

This is one of the most common in text citations. When you are quoting an author, use the author's last name and the page number in parenthesis at the end of the sentence.

Example

Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).

Page Numbers & Authors

Just as with your sources cited page, if there is no known author, you skip to the title of the work.

Example

Many in the liquor industry argue that the ban on television liquor advertising gives those in the beer and wine industry an unfair advantage ("Liquor Advertising" 5).

If there are no page numbers on your source, use the author in the parenthetical reference. If there is also no author use the title.

Example with Author

The utilitarianism of the Victorians “attempted to reduce decision-making about human actions to a ‘felicific calculus’” (Everett).

Example with No Author

"a tool that should be usable by any manager responsible for learning, without any significant cost or resource barriers" (Tools).

More

In MLA, the in text citation will generally consist of the author's last name and the page number from which you got the information. The easiest way to add it is at the end of the sentence 

Example

Harry's ability to converse with serpents was first established in The Philosopher's Stone, though "the significance of this skill is only developed later in The Chamber of Secrets when Harry hears an ominous voice in the corridors of Hogwarts." (Berman 45)

In MLA style the preference is always to use the direct source if you can find it, but if you can't find the original source you can cite a source indirectly.

Here's how

Cite using normal in text citation rules for MLA, but include the phrase qtd. in. On your works cited page you will only include the source that you actually looked at. For example, an article written by Peter Holbrook cites T.S. Eliot, and you want to cite the Eliot quote as well:

Eliot's position was that the "ordinary emotional person, experiencing a work of art, has a mixed critical and creative reaction". (qtd. in Holbrook 96).