5.3 MLA Documentation: In-Text Citations & Works Cited

MLA Documentation: In-Text Citations & Works Cited

Quick Overview: Modern Language Association (MLA) style, currently in its 9th edition, is the standard documentation system for the humanities, including literature, language, art, and cultural studies. The CLEP College Composition exam frequently tests your mastery of MLA formatting through multiple-choice questions requiring you to identify proper in-text parenthetical citations, recognize correct bibliographic entries, and catch punctuation errors. In MLA, documentation operates on a two-part reciprocal system: a concise in-text parenthetical citation in the body of the essay points the reader directly to an exhaustive entry on the Works Cited page.

MLA style prioritizes authorial accountability and page-level precision. Because humanities research centers on close readings of specific passages, knowing the exact page where a claim or quotation appears is vital.

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The Humanities Paradigm: Core Principles of MLA 9th Edition

Under MLA guidelines, documentation balances simplicity with comprehensiveness. The system operates on three governing principles:

1. Reciprocity: Every source cited in the text must have a corresponding entry on the Works Cited page, and every entry on the Works Cited page must correspond to at least one in-text citation.
2. Clarity: Parenthetical citations should be as unobtrusive as possible while providing sufficient information to locate the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page without ambiguity.
3. Flexibility: Through the Container Concept, MLA provides a universal template capable of citing traditional print books, digitized manuscripts, streaming video, podcasts, and academic databases.

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In-Text (Parenthetical) Citations: Author-Page Architecture

The fundamental unit of MLA in-text citation is the Author-Page formula. Unlike social science formats (such as APA), MLA never places a comma between the author's last name and the page number.

Standard Author-Page and Signal Phrase Formats

• Parenthetical Citation (Author not named in text): When the author is not mentioned in your signal phrase, enclose both the author's last name and the page number in parentheses at the conclusion of the borrowed material:

  The proliferation of mass-market paperbacks fundamentally altered mid-century reading habits (Radway 142).

• Narrative Citation (Author named in signal phrase): If you introduce the author's name within your sentence, include only the page number in the terminal parentheses:

  According to cultural historian Janice Radway, the proliferation of mass-market paperbacks fundamentally altered mid-century reading habits (142).

Multiple Authors and Institutional Attribution

Citing Indirect Sources (Material Quoted in Another Source)

Scholarly writers frequently encounter an author quoting a third party. When you wish to cite that quotation but cannot access the original work, you must use the abbreviation qtd. in ("quoted in") in your parenthetical citation to credit both the original speaker and the secondary source you actually read:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously defined poetic faith as "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith" (qtd. in Abrams 104).

Works Cited Implication: Your Works Cited page will contain an entry for Abrams (the work you actually examined), not Coleridge.

Punctuation Rules for Parenthetical Citations

• Standard Placement: In standard in-text citations, the parenthetical citation is placed inside the sentence boundary, meaning the period follows the closing parenthesis:

  Incorrect: "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." (Picasso 12) Correct: "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth" (Picasso 12).

• Block Quotation Placement: As noted in Section 5.2, block quotations reverse this rule: the parenthetical citation appears outside the final punctuation mark:

  ...concluding the historical sequence. (Picasso 12)

Works Cited Architecture: The Container Concept

In 2016, with the 8th edition (and continuing through the current 9th edition), the Modern Language Association abandoned rigid media-specific formulas in favor of a universal system of core elements organized within containers.

A container is the larger whole in which a smaller work is found. For example:

• An academic article (source) is contained within a scholarly journal (Container 1).
• That scholarly journal is contained within a digital database like JSTOR (Container 2).
• A television episode (source) is contained within a show season (Container 1), which is hosted on a streaming platform (Container 2).

The Nine Core Elements and Standard Punctuation

When cataloging a source, an examinee must list elements in the following exact order, followed by the designated punctuation mark:

1. Author. (Last Name, First Name. Followed by a period)
2. Title of source. (In quotation marks for contained works; italics for standalone works. Followed by a period)
3. Title of container, (In italics, followed by a comma)
4. Contributor, (e.g., edited by Jane Doe, translated by John Smith, followed by a comma)
5. Version, (e.g., 9th ed., director's cut, followed by a comma)
6. Number, (e.g., vol. 14, no. 2, followed by a comma)
7. Publisher, (Followed by a comma; omit words like Inc., Co., or Publishers)
8. Publication date, (Followed by a comma)
9. Location. (Page numbers: pp. 45-60; or DOI: https://doi.org/10.xxxx; followed by a period)

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Core Bibliographic Models in MLA 9

1. Print Book with a Single Author

• Formula: Author Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.
• Example:

  Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W. W. Norton, 2010.

2. Scholarly Journal Article Accessed via an Online Database (Two Containers)

• Formula: Author Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Journal, vol. number, no. number, Date, pp. page range. Title of Database (Container 2), DOI or URL.
• Example:

  Alonso, Mateo. "Suburban Modernity and the Architecture of Consumption." Journal of Urban History, vol. 46, no. 3, 2020, pp. 512–30. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144219895432.

3. Selection or Chapter in an Edited Anthology

• Formula: Author Last Name, First Name. "Title of Essay or Chapter." Title of Anthology, edited by Editor Name, Publisher, Publication Date, pp. page range.
• Example:

  Walker, Alice. "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay, W. W. Norton, 1997, pp. 2374–82.

4. Article on an Institutional or News Website

• Formula: Author Last Name, First Name. "Title of Web Article." Title of Website, Publisher (if different from site title), Day Month Year, URL.
• Example:

  Hess, Amanda. "How the Internet Created the Shared Delusion." The New York Times, 3 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/arts/internet-delusion.html.

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Works Cited Layout and Typographical Mechanics

The Works Cited list appears as the final page of an academic manuscript. Ensure compliance with four layout rules:

1. Header: The title Works Cited (centered, unbolded, without quotation marks or italics) appears one inch from the top margin.
2. Alphabetical Arrangement: Entries are ordered alphabetically by the author's surname. If an entry begins with a title (due to an anonymous author), alphabetize by the first significant word, ignoring initial articles (A, An, The).
3. Hanging Indent: The first line of each citation begins flush against the left margin; all subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches (one-half inch).
4. Double Spacing: The entire page is uniformly double-spaced throughout, with no extra empty lines between entries.