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• How to Quote | Citing Quotes in Harvard & APA

How to Quote | Citing Quotes in Harvard & APA

Published on 15 April 2022 by Shona McCombes and Jack Caulfield. Revised on 3 September 2022.

Quoting means copying a passage of someone else’s words and crediting the source. To quote a source, you must ensure:

• The quoted text is enclosed in quotation marks (usually single quotation marks in UK English, though double is acceptable as long as you’re consistent) or formatted as a block quote
• The original author is correctly cited
• The text is identical to the original

The exact format of a quote depends on its length and on which citation style you are using. Quoting and citing correctly is essential to avoid plagiarism , which is easy to detect with a good plagiarism checker .

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Table of contents

How to cite a quote in harvard and apa style, introducing quotes, quotes within quotes, shortening or altering a quote, block quotes, when should i use quotes, frequently asked questions about quoting sources.

Every time you quote, you must cite the source correctly . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style you’re using.

Citing a quote in Harvard style

When you include a quote in Harvard style, you must add a Harvard in-text citation giving the author’s last name, the year of publication, and a page number if available. Any full stop or comma appears after the citation, not within the quotation marks.

Citations can be parenthetical or narrative. In a parenthetical citation , you place all the information in brackets after the quote. In a narrative citation , you name the author in your sentence (followed by the year), and place the page number after the quote.

• Evolution is a gradual process that ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (Darwin, 1859, p. 510) . Darwin (1859) explains that evolution ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (p. 510) .

Complete guide to Harvard style

Citing a quote in APA Style

To cite a direct quote in APA , you must include the author’s last name, the year, and a page number, all separated by commas. If the quote appears on a single page, use ‘p.’; if it spans a page range, use ‘pp.’

An APA in-text citation can be parenthetical or narrative. In a parenthetical citation , you place all the information in parentheses after the quote. In a narrative citation , you name the author in your sentence (followed by the year), and place the page number after the quote.

Punctuation marks such as full stops and commas are placed after the citation, not within the quotation marks.

• Evolution is a gradual process that ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (Darwin, 1859, p. 510) .
• Darwin (1859) explains that evolution ‘can act only by very short and slow steps’ (p. 510) .

Complete guide to APA

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Make sure you integrate quotes properly into your text by introducing them in your own words, showing the reader why you’re including the quote and providing any context necessary to understand it.  Don’t  present quotations as stand-alone sentences.

There are three main strategies you can use to introduce quotes in a grammatically correct way:

• Add an introductory sentence
• Use an introductory signal phrase
• Integrate the quote into your own sentence

The following examples use APA Style citations, but these strategies can be used in all styles.

Introductory sentence

Introduce the quote with a full sentence ending in a colon . Don’t use a colon if the text before the quote isn’t a full sentence.

If you name the author in your sentence, you may use present-tense verbs, such as “states’, ‘argues’, ‘explains’, ‘writes’, or ‘reports’, to describe the content of the quote.

• In Denmark, a recent poll shows that: ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• In Denmark, a recent poll shows that support for the EU has grown since the Brexit vote: ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• Levring (2018) reports that support for the EU has grown since the Brexit vote: ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (p. 3).

Introductory signal phrase

You can also use a signal phrase that mentions the author or source but doesn’t form a full sentence. In this case, you follow the phrase with a comma instead of a colon.

• According to a recent poll, ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• As Levring (2018) explains, ‘A membership referendum held today would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ (p. 3).

Integrated into your own sentence

To quote a phrase that doesn’t form a full sentence, you can also integrate it as part of your sentence, without any extra punctuation.

• A recent poll suggests that EU membership ‘would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ in a referendum (Levring, 2018, p. 3).
• Levring (2018) reports that EU membership ‘would be backed by 55 percent of Danish voters’ in a referendum (p. 3).

When you quote text that itself contains another quote, this is called a nested quotation or a quote within a quote. It may occur, for example, when quoting dialogue from a novel.

To distinguish this quote from the surrounding quote, you enclose it in double (instead of single) quotation marks (even if this involves changing the punctuation from the original text). Make sure to close both sets of quotation marks at the appropriate moments.

Note that if you only quote the nested quotation itself, and not the surrounding text, you can just use single quotation marks.

• Carraway introduces his narrative by quoting his father: ‘ ‘ Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, ‘ he told me, ‘ just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had ‘ ‘ (Fitzgerald 1).
• Carraway introduces his narrative by quoting his father: ‘”Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had “  (Fitzgerald 1).
• Carraway introduces his narrative by quoting his father: ‘“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”’ (Fitzgerald 1).
• Carraway begins by quoting his father’s invocation to ‘remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had’ (Fitzgerald 1).

Note:  When the quoted text in the source comes from another source, it’s best to just find that original source in order to quote it directly. If you can’t find the original source, you can instead cite it indirectly .

Often, incorporating a quote smoothly into your text requires you to make some changes to the original text. It’s fine to do this, as long as you clearly mark the changes you’ve made to the quote.

Shortening a quote

If some parts of a passage are redundant or irrelevant, you can shorten the quote by removing words, phrases, or sentences and replacing them with an ellipsis (…). Put a space before and after the ellipsis.

Be careful that removing the words doesn’t change the meaning. The ellipsis indicates that some text has been removed, but the shortened quote should still accurately represent the author’s point.

Altering a quote

You can add or replace words in a quote when necessary. This might be because the original text doesn’t fit grammatically with your sentence (e.g., it’s in a different tense), or because extra information is needed to clarify the quote’s meaning.

Use brackets to distinguish words that you have added from words that were present in the original text.

The Latin term ‘ sic ‘ is used to indicate a (factual or grammatical) mistake in a quotation. It shows the reader that the mistake is from the quoted material, not a typo of your own.

In some cases, it can be useful to italicise part of a quotation to add emphasis, showing the reader that this is the key part to pay attention to. Use the phrase ’emphasis added’ to show that the italics were not part of the original text.

You usually don’t need to use brackets to indicate minor changes to punctuation or capitalisation made to ensure the quote fits the style of your text.

If you quote more than a few lines from a source, you must format it as a block quote . Instead of using quotation marks, you set the quote on a new line and indent it so that it forms a separate block of text.

Block quotes are cited just like regular quotes, except that if the quote ends with a full stop, the citation appears after the full stop.

To the end of his days Bilbo could never remember how he found himself outside, without a hat, a walking-stick or any money, or anything that he usually took when he went out; leaving his second breakfast half-finished and quite unwashed-up, pushing his keys into Gandalf’s hands, and running as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across The Water, and then on for a mile or more. (16)

Avoid relying too heavily on quotes in academic writing . To integrate a source , it’s often best to paraphrase , which means putting the passage into your own words. This helps you integrate information smoothly and keeps your own voice dominant.

However, there are some situations in which quotes are more appropriate.

When focusing on language

If you want to comment on how the author uses language (for example, in literary analysis ), it’s necessary to quote so that the reader can see the exact passage you are referring to.

When giving evidence

To convince the reader of your argument, interpretation or position on a topic, it’s often helpful to include quotes that support your point. Quotes from primary sources (for example, interview transcripts or historical documents) are especially credible as evidence.

When presenting an author’s position or definition

When you’re referring to secondary sources such as scholarly books and journal articles, try to put others’ ideas in your own words when possible.

But if a passage does a great job at expressing, explaining, or defining something, and it would be very difficult to paraphrase without changing the meaning or losing the weakening the idea’s impact, it’s worth quoting directly.

A quote is an exact copy of someone else’s words, usually enclosed in quotation marks and credited to the original author or speaker.

To present information from other sources in academic writing , it’s best to paraphrase in most cases. This shows that you’ve understood the ideas you’re discussing and incorporates them into your text smoothly.

It’s appropriate to quote when:

• Changing the phrasing would distort the meaning of the original text
• You want to discuss the author’s language choices (e.g., in literary analysis )
• You’re presenting a precise definition
• You’re looking in depth at a specific claim

Every time you quote a source , you must include a correctly formatted in-text citation . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style .

For example, a direct quote in APA is cited like this: ‘This is a quote’ (Streefkerk, 2020, p. 5).

Every in-text citation should also correspond to a full reference at the end of your paper.

In scientific subjects, the information itself is more important than how it was expressed, so quoting should generally be kept to a minimum. In the arts and humanities, however, well-chosen quotes are often essential to a good paper.

In social sciences, it varies. If your research is mainly quantitative , you won’t include many quotes, but if it’s more qualitative , you may need to quote from the data you collected .

As a general guideline, quotes should take up no more than 5–10% of your paper. If in doubt, check with your instructor or supervisor how much quoting is appropriate in your field.

If you’re quoting from a text that paraphrases or summarises other sources and cites them in parentheses , APA recommends retaining the citations as part of the quote:

• Smith states that ‘the literature on this topic (Jones, 2015; Sill, 2019; Paulson, 2020) shows no clear consensus’ (Smith, 2019, p. 4).

Footnote or endnote numbers that appear within quoted text should be omitted.

If you want to cite an indirect source (one you’ve only seen quoted in another source), either locate the original source or use the phrase ‘as cited in’ in your citation.

A block quote is a long quote formatted as a separate ‘block’ of text. Instead of using quotation marks , you place the quote on a new line, and indent the entire quote to mark it apart from your own words.

APA uses block quotes for quotes that are 40 words or longer.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. & Caulfield, J. (2022, September 03). How to Quote | Citing Quotes in Harvard & APA. Scribbr. Retrieved 12 August 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/working-sources/quoting/

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How to Cite a Quote

Last Updated: June 27, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 18 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 1,270,285 times.

According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the word "plagiarize" can mean trying to pass off someone else's ideas, work or words as your own, or using those ideas, work or words without giving due credit to the source. You can avoid either misdeed by simply giving credit where credit is due. The three primary citation styles are APA, MLA, and CMS.

Sample Citations

Cite a Quote in APA Style

Example: Smith (2013) states that citing quotes can be challenging.

The author remarks on the "difficulty of citing quotes," (Smith, 2002, p. 32) but does not go into depth. or Smith (2002) mentions the "difficulty of citing quotes" (p. 32) but does not go into depth.

These scholars agree that "quotes are useful" (Hu, Koller, and Shier, 2013, p. 75). or Hu, Koller, and Shier agree that "quotes are useful" (p. 75).

In a study, it was determined that “the sky is in fact blue” (“Obvious Observations,” 2013).

Another study showed that “clouds are white” (“More Obvious Observations,” n.d., para. 7).

The message affirmed that “the sky is in fact blue” (John Smith, email, August 23, 2013).

Book with one or more authors: Lastname, First Initials (year published). Title of Book . Location: Publisher. Book with no author: [7] X Trustworthy Source APA Style Definitive source for current APA style writing and citation guidelines Go to source Title of Book. (Year). Location: Publisher. Web page: Lastname, First Initials (date of publication). Title of document. URL. If there is no date, write n.d. If there is no author, start with "Title. (date)." [8] X Research source

Cite a Quote in MLA Style

The meat factory workers of Chicago “were tied to the great packing-machine, and tied to it for life” (Sinclair, 99). or Upton Sinclair described the workers as "tied to the great packing-machine, and tied to it for life” (99).

Two or three authors The authors state, “citing quotes can be annoying” (Hu, Koller, and Shier 45). More than three authors: The authors state, “citing different sources can be confusing” (Perhamus et al. 63). [11] X Research source

Citing How to Cite Like a Champion and Be Better Than Other Writers : Citing sources can get annoying because “it can take a while” (Cite like a Champion 72).

The sky is blue but “clouds are white” (Obvious Observations Online).

An email message confirmed that “the sky is indeed blue” (Smith).

Book with one author: Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book . City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication. Note: The Medium of Publication is "Print" for paper books. Other media include Web and Radio. Book with multiple authors: Lastname, Firstname of first alphabetical author, then Firstname Lastname for other authors. Title of Book . City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication. Book with no known author: Title of publication . City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication. Web page: [16] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source “Name of Article.” Name of Website. Name of website owner, date of publication. Web. Date of access. Note: Write n.d. if no publishing date is listed. Personal interview: Lastname, Firstname of interviewee. Personal interview. Date. Published interview: Lastname, Firstname of interviewee. Interview with (Name of Interviewer). Publication or program (year): page numbers if applicable. Medium of publication. Personal message: Lastname, Firstname of sender. “Title of Message.” Medium. Date.

Cite a Quote in CMS

The people who worked in the meat factories of Chicago at the turn of the century “were tied to the great packing-machine, and tied to it for life.” 1

1 Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (Doubleday, Page & Company: 1906), 99.

With an author: John Doe, “Citing Sources,” Organization of Writing Fanatics, last modified August 23, 2013, www.blahcitingblahblah.com Page without an author: “Citing Sources,” Organization of Writing Fanatics, last modified August 23, 2013, www.blahcitingblahblah.com

Unpublished interview: John Doe, (musician) in discussion with the author, Aug 23, 2013. Published interview: John Doe, interviewed by Jane Doe, Music Lovers, Aug 23, 2013. Personal communication: John Doe, email to the author, Aug 23, 2013.

' Book with one author: Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication. Book with two authors: Lastname, Firstname and Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication. Book with no known author: Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication. Web page with author: Lastname, Firstname. “Title of Web Page.” Publishing Organization or Name of Website in Italics. Publication date and/or access date if available. URL. Web page without an author: “Title of Web Page.” Publishing Organization or Name of Website in Italics. Publication date and/or access date if available. URL. Published Interview: Lastname, Firstname of interviewee, place where interview was held, by Interviewer's Firstname Lastname, date.

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• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_author_authors.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_electronic_sources.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_basic_rules.html
• ↑ http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-book-no-author.aspx
• ↑ https://libguides.jcu.edu.au/apa/reference-list
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/mlacitation/intext
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_electronic_sources.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_other_common_sources.html
• ↑ https://research.wou.edu/c.php?g=551307&p=3785495
• ↑ https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/books.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/web_sources.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/interviews_personal_communication.html
• ↑ https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

About This Article

To cite a quote using APA, put parentheses with the citation directly after the quoted material. For a citation with one or more authors, include their last names, the year of publication, and page number preceded by a "p.” If you're citing something but don't know the author, put the title of the publication and its date in parentheses. You can follow the same author-date format to cite web pages, but if you don't know the author or the date, use a shortened version of the web page title and write "n.d." after for "no date." To learn how to cite a quote using MLA or CMS, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Writing with artificial intelligence, quoting in mla – definition & examples.

• © 2023 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College

Table of Contents

Quotations are effective in academic writing when used carefully and selectively. Although misquoting or quoting too much can confuse or overwhelm your audience, quoting relevant and unique words, phrases, sentences, lines, or passages can help you achieve your purpose.

The Modern Language Association (MLA) provides guidelines/rules for quoting:

• Quotes within quotes.  

This article discusses rules for quoting both prose and quotes within quotes. It also addresses a few special issues, like what to do if there is a spelling error in a quote, as well as how to handle punctuation. Consult the MLA Handbook to review additional topics and learn more.

Writers must always accurately quote the source. If you decide to quote a source in order to support your thesis statement, reproduce the source word for word. Unless you use brackets or parentheses (see below), changes to the source’s words, spelling, capitalization, or punctuation cannot be made. Additionally, introducing the quote with a signal phrase helps you smoothly incorporate the quotation (“Quotations” 75).

Quoting Prose

The rules for quoting prose vary according to how much you quote. Adhere to the following guidelines.

Special Issues: Omissions in Passages

According to the MLA Handbook , if you must omit a word, phrase, or sentence from a quoted passage, mark the omission with ellipsis points (. . . ), or three spaced periods (80-81).

If you omit an entire sentence, use ellipses points, and retain rules for end punctuation (always place a period at the end of a declarative sentence). In other words, use four periods, with no space before the first or after the last. Follow this rule for a quotation with an ellipses at the end as well, except when a parenthetical citation follows the ellipses.

Original : “I know I have said this before and will say it again, but it bears repeating: if it’s not in the text, it doesn’t exist. We can only read what is present in a novel, play, or film. If something informed the author’s creation of the text but the evidence is not present in the text, that’s a matter for scholars concerned with motives, not with readers wrestling with meaning” (80). Quote with Omission : In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster emphasizes the importance of focusing on textual evidence: “I know I have said this before and will say it again, but it bears repeating: if it’s not in the text, it doesn’t exist. . . . If something informed the author’s creation of the text but the evidence is not

Explanation : Foster’s main point is that readers of literature should concern themselves with the evidence in the text. Pointing out that readers can only read what is actually present in a particular text is illustrative, but this assertion can be omitted without changing the meaning of the passage.

A Word of Caution : Never present a quote in a way that could cause a reader to misunderstand the original quote (80-81).

Additional Special Issues

Other Alterations of Quotes

There may be some occasions when you need to alter a quote in order to prevent the audience from becoming confused.

Punctuation

In the book Subliminal, Leonard Mlodinow explains the role that technology has played in furthering our understanding of the unconscious: “The current revolution in thinking about the unconscious came about because, with modern instruments, we can watch as different structures and substructures in the brain generate feelings and emotions. We can measure the electrical output of individual neurons” (15).

As Harry Frankfurt cautions, “The fact that a person could not have avoided doing something is a sufficient condition of his having done it. But, as some of my examples show, this fact may play no role whatever in the explanation of why he did it” (8).

To further explain the principle of diminishing marginal utility of income, Watts quotes Abba Lerner, who argues that the principle ““can be derived from the assumption that consumers spend their income in a way that maximizes the satisfaction they can derive from the good obtained’” (Lerner qtd. in Watts 141).

“No!” she emphatically responded, for the third time.

Do you agree with Watts’s view regarding the essential difference between persons and other creatures: that it is to be found in the “structure of a person’s will” (12)? The question mark is not part of the quoted material, so it should be placed outside the closing quotation mark.

Quoting prose in MLA format can seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, the MLA has offered clear guidelines for doing so. Consult the MLA Handbook to learn more about quoting in MLA.

Works Cited

Foster, Thomas. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines . Revised Edition. Harper Perennial, 2014.

Frankfurt, Harry. The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge UP, 1998.

Mlodinow, Leonard. Subliminal : How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior . Vintage Books, 2012.

“Quotations.” The MLA Handbook . 8 th edition. The Modern Language Association of America, 2016, pp. 75-91.

Smith, James Jr. The Writer’s Little Helper . Writer’s Digest Books, 2006.

Watts, Alan. The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are . 1966. VintageBooks, 1989.

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How to Cite Passages From a Book in an Essay

A writer can emphasize and support his ideas in an essay by citing book passages. Generally, writings submitted for scholastic credit must follow a widely acceptable format. The American Psychological Association and Modern Language Association writing styles are commonly used for high school and college works and have specific rules for quoting book passages.

According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Sixth Edition), citations include the authors' last names and publication years at the beginning of book quotes. Page numbers, preceded by the letter p, end quotes.

For example, Smith, (2012) states "beta blockers can prevent heart attacks" (p. 246).

Book quotes with 40 or more words are indented 1/2 inch from the left margin without quotation marks. The authors' last names with publication dates in parenthesis begin long quotes. The quotes should end with parenthetical page references.

According to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Paper (Seventh Edition), citations for short book quotes include the author's last name and page number in parenthesis.

For example, "proper use of beta blockers prevents heart attacks" (Smith 244).

Long passages of four or more lines are indented 1 inch from the left margin without quotation marks. The parenthetical author's name and page number are placed at the end of the cite.

Complete References

APA and MLA require full cites in reference or works cited pages of essays. APA cites include the author's name, publication year, book title, and location and name of the publisher. MLA requires the author's last and first name, book title, location and name of the publisher, and year published. MLA also identifies the publication medium at the end of the cite, such as print.

Need help with a citation? Try our citation generator .

• Purdue Online Writing Lab: In-Text Citations: APA Citation Basics
• Purdue Online Writing Lab: MLA Formatting Quotations
• The Writing Center: University of Wisconsin: Using Literary Quotations
• Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed.
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed.

Maggie Lourdes is a full-time attorney in southeast Michigan. She teaches law at Cleary University in Ann Arbor and online for National University in San Diego. Her writing has been featured in "Realtor Magazine," the N.Y. State Bar's "Health Law Journal," "Oakland County Legal News," "Michigan Probate & Estate Planning Journal," "Eye Spy Magazine" and "Surplus Today" magazine.

Home / Guides / Citation Guides / MLA Format / How to Cite an Essay in MLA

How to Cite an Essay in MLA

The guidelines for citing an essay in MLA format are similar to those for citing a chapter in a book. Include the author of the essay, the title of the essay, the name of the collection if the essay belongs to one, the editor of the collection or other contributors, the publication information, and the page number(s).

Citing an Essay

Mla essay citation structure.

Last, First M. “Essay Title.” Collection Title, edited by First M. Last, Publisher, year published, page numbers. Website Title , URL (if applicable).

MLA Essay Citation Example

Gupta, Sanjay. “Balancing and Checking.” Essays on Modern Democracy, edited by Bob Towsky, Brook Stone Publishers, 1996, pp. 36-48. Essay Database, www . databaseforessays.org/modern/modern-democracy.

MLA Essay In-text Citation Structure

(Last Name Page #)

MLA Essay In-text Citation Example

Click here to cite an essay via an EasyBib citation form.

MLA Formatting Guide

MLA Formatting

• Annotated Bibliography
• Bibliography
• Block Quotes
• et al Usage
• In-text Citations
• Paraphrasing
• Page Numbers
• Sample Paper
• Works Cited
• MLA 8 Updates
• MLA 9 Updates
• View MLA Guide

Citation Examples

• Book Chapter
• Journal Article
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Website (no author)
• View all MLA Examples

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To cite your sources in an essay in MLA style, you need to have basic information including the author’s name(s), chapter title, book title, editor(s), publication year, publisher, and page numbers. The templates for in-text citations and a works-cited-list entry for essay sources and some examples are given below:

In-text citation template and example:

For citations in prose, use the first name and surname of the author on the first occurrence. For subsequent citations, use only the surname(s). In parenthetical citations, always use only the surname of the author(s).

Citation in prose:

First mention: Annette Wheeler Cafarelli

Subsequent occurrences: Wheeler Cafarelli

Parenthetical:

….(Wheeler Cafarelli).

Works-cited-list entry template and example:

The title of the chapter is enclosed in double quotation marks and uses title case. The book or collection title is given in italics and uses title case.

Surname, First Name. “Title of the Chapter.” Title of the Book , edited by Editor(s) Name, Publisher, Publication Year, page range.

Cafarelli, Annette Wheeler. “Rousseau and British Romanticism: Women and British Romanticism.” Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature , edited by Gregory Maertz. State U of New York P, 1998, pp. 125–56.

To cite an essay in MLA style, you need to have basic information including the author(s), the essay title, the book title, editor(s), publication year, publisher, and page numbers. The templates for citations in prose, parenthetical citations, and works-cited-list entries for an essay by multiple authors, and some examples, are given below:

For citations in prose, use the first name and surname of the author (e.g., Mary Strine).

For sources with two authors, use both full author names in prose (e.g., Mary Strine and Beth Radick).

For sources with three or more authors, use the first name and surname of the first author followed by “and others” or “and colleagues” (e.g., Mary Strine and others). In subsequent citations, use only the surname of the first author followed by “and others” or “and colleagues” (e.g., Strine and others).

In parenthetical citations, use only the author’s surname. For sources with two authors, use two surnames (e.g., Strine and Radick). For sources with three or more author names, use the first author’s surname followed by “et al.”

First mention: Mary Strine…

Subsequent mention: Strine…

First mention: Mary Strine and Beth Radick…

Subsequent mention: Strine and Radick…

First mention: Mary Strine and colleagues …. or Mary Strine and others

Subsequent occurrences: Strine and colleagues …. or Strine and others

…. (Strine).

….(Strine and Radick).

….(Strine et al.).

The title of the essay is enclosed in double quotation marks and uses title case. The book or collection title is given in italics and uses title case.

Surname, First Name, et al. “Title of the Essay.” Title of the Book , edited by Editor(s) Name, Publisher, Publication Year, page range.

Strine, Mary M., et al. “Research in Interpretation and Performance Studies: Trends, Issues, Priorities.” Speech Communication: Essays to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Speech Communication Association , edited by Gerald M. Phillips and Julia T. Wood, Southern Illinois UP, 1990, pp. 181–204.

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How To Properly Quote A Book: Citing Quotes From A Book The Right Way

December 6, 2023 By Training Authors Leave a Comment Click here for FREE training for Christian writers

How to properly quote a book? Moreover, citing a quote can be a mark of respect for the original author’s eloquent expression—adopting their words to enrich your own work. Furthermore, done with attention to proper attribution, it acknowledges the value of their contribution to your narrative. However, are you confident you’re doing it with the integrity it deserves?

How to properly quote a book – Key Takeaways

• Understand the importance of accurate quoting
• Learn the proper techniques for citation
• Gain access to resources that streamline quoting practices

Understanding How to Accurately Attribute Quotations from Books

The significance of quoting with precision.

Respecting copyright and intellectual property, you enhance both the legal and ethical standing of your work. In addition, as you acknowledge others’ contributions, you also bolster the reliability of your own content. Moreover, a careful citation is more than a formality; it reinforces your commitment to academic honesty and the golden rule of treating others’ work as you would wish yours to be treated.

You strengthen your arguments when you incorporate authoritative voices from relevant literature. Furthermore, incorporating the insights of others shows you’ve engaged deeply with the topic and are presenting a well-considered perspective.

Citing A Book: Principles For Accurate Attribution

Choosing a Quotation Style

Select a citation style according to your field of study or the publication’s requirements. Whether it’s APA for the social sciences, MLA for humanities, or the Chicago style for a variety of purposes, each format has precise rules for quoting sources effectively.

APA Style Direct Quote Example: “Here’s a direct quote” (Johnson, 2016, p. 52).

MLA Style Direct Quote Example: “Here’s a direct quote” (Johnson 52).

Chicago Style Direct Quote Example: “Here’s a direct quote” (Johnson, 2016, 52).

Formatting Quotes and Citations

Depending on the length and format of quotes use quotation marks for shorter excerpts or indented blocks for longer passages. Also, Remember to include relevant details like the author’s last name, publication year, and page numbers, as detailed by the citation style you’re using.

Paraphrasing and Summarizing

When you reword an author’s ideas in your own style, that’s paraphrasing. Similarly, summarizing condenses the main points into a brief overview. Both require citations, as the ideas originate from another person’s work.

Steering Clear of Quoting and Citation Errors

Remain vigilant about punctuation when quoting; periods and commas should be inside the quotation marks. In addition, accuracy in quoting demands that every comma, period, and citation appears in its rightful place to maintain readability and prevent miscommunication.

Maintain the integrity of quotes by verifying their sources before inclusion. Moreover, misattribution can undermine your credibility. Additionally, use digital tools like Google Books or Wikiquote to confirm quotations and attribute them correctly.

Always attribute quotes to avoid accidental plagiarism. Furthermore, using someone else’s words without proper credit can have serious consequences and impugn your integrity. Moreover, remember to employ a consistent format for in-text citations and full references in the bibliography to comply with academic standards.

Quoting from literature enriches your work, imbuing it with depth and authority. Therefore, follow these guidelines to cite with confidence and navigate the nuances of academic integrity with ease.

How to properly quote a book: Guides on Correctly Citing Literature (MLA and Chicago Style)

Recognized Styles :

• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• American Psychological Association (APA)
• Chicago Manual of Style (CMS)

Notable Differences :

• MLA primarily used for humanities.
• APA preferred for sciences.
• CMS suitable for broad range of subjects.
• MLA or APA? Humanities often use MLA, while APA is for sciences.
• CMS relevance? Offers flexibility across various subjects.

Formatting Essentials :

• MLA : Author’s last name and first name. Book Title, Publisher, and Year Published.
• APA : Author’s last nameand initials. (Year Published), Book Title, and Publisher.
• CMS : Author’s last name and first name. Book Title, City of publication: Publisher, and Year Published.

How to properly quote a book: Suggested Literature

For Nonfiction Authors:

• Navigating Common Errors in Drafting
• Mastering Self-Review Techniques

Enhance Your Editing Skills:

• Recognize and Fix Typical Writing Slip-ups
• Implement Effective DIY Revision Strategies

How to properly quote a book: Common Inquiries Regarding Book Quotations

Apa style book quotation formatting.

When quoting from a book in APA style, include the author’s last name, publication year, and page number in parentheses after the quote. For example, (Smith, 2020, p. 152).

Incorporating Book Quotes into Essays

To integrate a direct quote, introduce it with a signal phrase, such as “According to Smith (2020),” followed by the quotation and a parenthetical citation.

Citing Book Titles in Text

Italicize the title of the book within the essay text. Also, capitalize the major words of the title, for instance, The Great Gatsby .

Referencing Direct Quotes from Individuals in Scholarly Writing

For a direct quote from a person, include their name, the year, and the page number if available, and much like a book citation. Example: (Doe, 2021, p. 45).

In-Text Citation Example

When citing within the body of an essay, you might write, “It is noted that ‘the data reflects…’ (Smith, 2020, p. 152).”

Attributing Quotes from Books in Academic Work

To correctly attribute a quote from a book:

• Introduce the quote with the author’s name
• Include a citation after the quote
• Add the full citation in the reference list at the end of your paper

Resources for How to Properly Quote a Book

• American Psychological Association
• Chicago Manual of Style
• APA vs MLA – The Key Differences in Format and Citation

Recommended Reading

• 5 Editing Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Nonfiction Book
• 5 Steps to Self-Editing Your Writing

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Suggested Ways to Introduce Quotations

When you quote another writer's words, it's best to introduce or contextualize the quote. 

How To Quote In An Essay?

To introduce a quote in an essay, don't forget to include author's last name and page number (MLA) or author, date, and page number (APA) in your citation. Shown below are some possible ways to introduce quotations. The examples use MLA format.

Use A Full Sentence Followed by A Colon To Introduce A Quotation

• The setting emphasizes deception: "Nothing is as it appears" (Smith 1).
• Piercy ends the poem on an ironic note: "To every woman a happy ending" (25).

Begin A Sentence with Your Own Words, Then Complete It with Quoted Words

Note that in the second example below, a slash with a space on either side ( / ) marks a line break in the original poem.

• Hamlet's task is to avenge a "foul and most unnatural murder" (Shakespeare 925).
• The speaker is mystified by her sleeping baby, whose "moth-breath / flickers among the flat pink roses" (Plath 17).

Use An Introductory Phrase Naming The Source, Followed By A Comma to Quote A Critic or Researcher

Note that the first letter after the quotation marks should be upper case. According to MLA guidelines, if you change the case of a letter from the original, you must indicate this with brackets. APA format doesn't require brackets.

• According to Smith, "[W]riting is fun" (215).
• In Smith's words, " . . .
• In Smith's view, " . . .

Use A Descriptive Verb, Followed by A Comma To Introduce A Critic's Words

Avoid using says unless the words were originally spoken aloud, for instance, during an interview.

• Smith states, "This book is terrific" (102).
• Smith remarks, " . . .
• Smith writes, " . . .
• Smith notes, " . . .
• Smith comments, " . . .
• Smith observes, " . . .
• Smith concludes, " . . .
• Smith reports, " . . .
• Smith maintains, " . . .
• Smith adds, " . . .

Don't Follow It with A Comma If Your Lead into The Quotation Ends in That or As

The first letter of the quotation should be lower case.

• Smith points out that "millions of students would like to burn this book" (53).
• Smith emphasizes that " . . .
• Smith interprets the hand washing in MacBeth as "an attempt at absolution" (106).
• Smith describes the novel as "a celebration of human experience" (233).

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Enhance your academic writing skills by exploring our additional writing resources that will help you craft compelling essays, research papers, and more.

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Ursula Le Guin Once Said She's 'Rankled by JK Rowling's 'Reluctance' to Credit Other Writers?

The “harry potter” series and le guin’s “earthsea” series both depicted schools for wizards., nur ibrahim, published aug. 12, 2024.

About this rating

For several years, a quote from famed writer Ursula Le Guin has made the rounds on tumblr and Reddit , in which she appears to criticize fellow writer JK Rowling. Rowling's " Harry Potter " book series, which was set in a magical school for wizards, was preceded by Le Guin's " Earthsea " series that also depicted a school for magic.

Le Guin allegedly once said about Rowling:

I didn't originate the idea of a school for wizards — if anybody did it was T.H. White, though he did it in a single throwaway line and didn't develop it. I was the first to do that. Years later, Rowling took the idea and developed it along other lines. She didn't plagiarize. She didn't copy anything. Her book, in fact, could hardly be more different from mine, in style, spirit, everything. The only thing that rankles me is her apparent reluctance to admit that she ever learned anything from other writers. When ignorant critics praised her wonderful originality in inventing the idea of a wizards' school, and some of them even seemed to believe that she had invented fantasy, she let them do so. This, I think, was ungenerous, and in the long run unwise.

The above quote is authentic and was part of an essay by Le Guin, titled, " Art, Information, Theft, and Confusion, Part Two ." As such we rate this claim as "Correct Attribution."

The above essay was not available online, so we reached out to her estate . A spokesperson directed us to an archived link. The essay appeared in 2010 on the website of Book View Cafe, an online bookstore and blog. Per the website , Le Guin was a founding member of Book View Cafe and frequently published her writings on its blog.

Le Guin began the post by paying homage to science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who she said heavily influenced her book "The Lathe of Heaven." She detailed how she was not simply copying Dick's work: "I'm trying to bring out the difference between copying a text into your own work, and applying techniques learned from a text to your own work. Then there's the difference between imitation and emulation. It's subtler, but really it's almost as clear as the difference between copying a text and being influenced by it."

She then brought up her issue with Rowling, who she said simply did not credit other writers who may have influenced her work (emphasis, ours):

So, then, what's the difference between being influenced by a body of work and admitting it, and being influenced by a body of work and not admitting it? This last is the situation, as I see it, between my A Wizard of Earthsea and J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter. I didn't originate the idea of a school for wizards — if anybody did it was T.H. White, though he did it in single throwaway line and didn't develop it. I was the first to do that. Years later, Rowling took the idea and developed it along other lines. She didn't plagiarize. She didn't copy anything. Her book, in fact, could hardly be more different from mine, in style, spirit, everything. The only thing that rankles me is her apparent reluctance to admit that she ever learned anything from other writers. When ignorant critics praised her wonderful originality in inventing the idea of a wizards' school, and some of them even seemed to believe that she had invented fantasy, she let them do so. This, I think, was ungenerous, and in the long run unwise. I'm happier with writers who, perhaps suffering less from the famous "anxiety of influence," have enough sense of their own worth to appreciate their predecessors and fellow-workers in the saltmines of literature. The whole history of a literature and of every genre within it is a chain of influences, inventions shared, discoveries made common, techniques adopted and adapted. Must I say again that this has absolutely nothing to do with copying texts, with stealing stuff?

This was not the only time Le Guin criticized Rowling's writing. In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, she called Rowling's work "derivative":

Interviewer : Nicholas Lezard has written 'Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.' What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I'd like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling's writing style. Le Guin : I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the "incredible originality" of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a "school novel", good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

In a 2005 profile of Le Guin in The Guardian, she both credited Rowling for giving fantasy a boost, and stated the same criticism of Rowling that she presented in the 2010 essay.

Her credit to JK Rowling for giving the "whole fantasy field a boost" is tinged with regret. "I didn't feel she ripped me off, as some people did," she says quietly, "though she could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them. That hurt."

"Chronicles of Earthsea." The Guardian, 9 Feb. 2004. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/09/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.ursulakleguin. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

Jaggi, Maya. "The Magician." The Guardian, 17 Dec. 2005. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/17/booksforchildrenandteenagers.shopping. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

Le Guin, Ursula. "Art, Information, Theft, and Confusion, Part Two." Book View Cafe, 1 Aug. 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20141107170642/https://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2010/08/01/art-information-theft-and-confusion-part-two/. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

"Ursula Le Guin." Book View Cafe. 19 July 2022, https://bookviewcafe.com/bvc_author/ursula-k-leguin/. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

By Nur Ibrahim

Nur Nasreen Ibrahim is a reporter with experience working in television, international news coverage, fact checking, and creative writing.

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MLA Works Cited Page: Books

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

When you are gathering book sources, be sure to make note of the following bibliographic items: the author name(s), other contributors such as translators or editors, the book’s title, editions of the book, the publication date, the publisher, and the pagination.

The 8 th  edition of the MLA handbook highlights principles over prescriptive practices. Essentially, a writer will need to take note of primary elements in every source, such as author, title, etc. and then assort them in a general format. Thus, by using this methodology, a writer will be able to cite any source regardless of whether it’s included in this list.

Please note these changes in the new edition:

• Commas are used instead of periods between Publisher, Publication Date, and Pagination.
• Medium is no longer necessary.
• Containers are now a part of the MLA process. Commas should be used after container titles.
• DOIs should be used instead of URLS when available.
• Use the term “Accessed” instead of listing the date or the abbreviation, “n.d."

Below is the general format for any citation:

Author. Title. Title of container (do not list container for standalone books, e.g. novels), Other contributors (translators or editors), Version (edition), Number (vol. and/or no.), Publisher, Publication Date, Location (pages, paragraphs URL or DOI). 2 nd  container’s title, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location, Date of Access (if applicable).

Basic Book Format

The author’s name or a book with a single author's name appears in last name, first name format. The basic form for a book citation is:

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book . City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.

* Note: the City of Publication should only be used if the book was published before 1900, if the publisher has offices in more than one country, or if the publisher is unknown in North America.

Book with One Author

Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science . Penguin, 1987.

Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House . MacMurray, 1999.

Book with More Than One Author

When a book has two authors, order the authors in the same way they are presented in the book. Start by listing the first name that appears on the book in last name, first name format; subsequent author names appear in normal order (first name last name format).

Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring . Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

If there are three or more authors, list only the first author followed by the phrase et al. (Latin for "and others") in place of the subsequent authors' names. (Note that there is a period after “al” in “et al.” Also note that there is never a period after the “et” in “et al.”).

Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition . Utah State UP, 2004.

Two or More Books by the Same Author

List works alphabetically by title. (Remember to ignore articles like A, An, and The.) Provide the author’s name in last name, first name format for the first entry only. For each subsequent entry by the same author, use three hyphens and a period.

Palmer, William J. Dickens and New Historicism . St. Martin's, 1997.

---. The Films of the Eighties: A Social History . Southern Illinois UP, 1993.

Book by a Corporate Author or Organization

A corporate author may include a commission, a committee, a government agency, or a group that does not identify individual members on the title page.

List the names of corporate authors in the place where an author’s name typically appears at the beginning of the entry.

American Allergy Association. Allergies in Children . Random House, 1998.

When the author and publisher are the same, skip the author, and list the title first. Then, list the corporate author only as the publisher.

Fair Housing—Fair Lending. Aspen Law & Business, 1985.

Book with No Author

List by title of the book. Incorporate these entries alphabetically just as you would with works that include an author name. For example, the following entry might appear between entries of works written by Dean, Shaun and Forsythe, Jonathan.

Encyclopedia of Indiana . Somerset, 1993.

Remember that for an in-text (parenthetical) citation of a book with no author, you should provide the name of the work in the signal phrase and the page number in parentheses. You may also use a shortened version of the title of the book accompanied by the page number. For more information see the In-text Citations for Print Sources with No Known Author section of In-text Citations: The Basics .

A Translated Book

If you want to emphasize the work rather than the translator, cite as you would any other book. Add “translated by” and follow with the name(s) of the translator(s).

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason . Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage-Random House, 1988.

If you want to focus on the translation, list the translator as the author. In place of the author’s name, the translator’s name appears. His or her name is followed by the label, “translator.” If the author of the book does not appear in the title of the book, include the name, with a “By” after the title of the book and before the publisher. Note that this type of citation is less common and should only be used for papers or writing in which translation plays a central role.

Howard, Richard, translator. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason . By Michel Foucault, Vintage-Random House, 1988.

Republished Book

Books may be republished due to popularity without becoming a new edition. New editions are typically revisions of the original work. For books that originally appeared at an earlier date and that have been republished at a later one, insert the original publication date before the publication information.

For books that are new editions (i.e. different from the first or other editions of the book), see An Edition of a Book below.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble . 1990. Routledge, 1999.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine . 1984. Perennial-Harper, 1993.

An Edition of a Book

There are two types of editions in book publishing: a book that has been published more than once in different editions and a book that is prepared by someone other than the author (typically an editor).

A Subsequent Edition

Cite the book as you normally would, but add the number of the edition after the title.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students . 3rd ed., Pearson, 2004.

A Work Prepared by an Editor

Cite the book as you normally would, but add the editor after the title with the label "edited by."

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre,  edited by Margaret Smith, Oxford UP, 1998.

Note that the format for citing sources with important contributors with editor-like roles follows the same basic template:

...adapted by John Doe...

Finally, in the event that the source features a contributor that cannot be described with a past-tense verb and the word "by" (e.g., "edited by"), you may instead use a noun followed by a comma, like so:

...guest editor, Jane Smith...

Anthology or Collection (e.g. Collection of Essays)

To cite the entire anthology or collection, list by editor(s) followed by a comma and "editor" or, for multiple editors, "editors." This sort of entry is somewhat rare. If you are citing a particular piece within an anthology or collection (more common), see A Work in an Anthology, Reference, or Collection below.

Hill, Charles A., and Marguerite Helmers, editors. Defining Visual Rhetorics . Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.

Peterson, Nancy J., editor. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches . Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

A Work in an Anthology, Reference, or Collection

Works may include an essay in an edited collection or anthology, or a chapter of a book. The basic form is for this sort of citation is as follows:

Last name, First name. "Title of Essay." Title of Collection , edited by Editor's Name(s), Publisher, Year, Page range of entry.

Some examples:

Harris, Muriel. "Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers." A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One , edited by Ben Rafoth, Heinemann, 2000, pp. 24-34.

Swanson, Gunnar. "Graphic Design Education as a Liberal Art: Design and Knowledge in the University and The 'Real World.'" The Education of a Graphic Designer , edited by Steven Heller, Allworth Press, 1998, pp. 13-24.

Note on Cross-referencing Several Items from One Anthology: If you cite more than one essay from the same edited collection, MLA indicates you may cross-reference within your works cited list in order to avoid writing out the publishing information for each separate essay. You should consider this option if you have several references from a single text. To do so, include a separate entry for the entire collection listed by the editor's name as below:

Rose, Shirley K, and Irwin Weiser, editors. The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher . Heinemann, 1999.

Then, for each individual essay from the collection, list the author's name in last name, first name format, the title of the essay, the editor's last name, and the page range:

L'Eplattenier, Barbara. "Finding Ourselves in the Past: An Argument for Historical Work on WPAs." Rose and Weiser, pp. 131-40.

Peeples, Tim. "'Seeing' the WPA With/Through Postmodern Mapping." Rose and Weiser, pp. 153-67.

Please note: When cross-referencing items in the works cited list, alphabetical order should be maintained for the entire list.

Poem or Short Story Examples :

Burns, Robert. "Red, Red Rose." 100 Best-Loved Poems, edited by Philip Smith, Dover, 1995, p. 26.

Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl." The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories , edited by Tobias Wolff, Vintage, 1994, pp. 306-07.

If the specific literary work is part of the author's own collection (all of the works have the same author), then there will be no editor to reference:

Whitman, Walt. "I Sing the Body Electric." Selected Poems, Dover, 1991, pp. 12-19.

Carter, Angela. "The Tiger's Bride." Burning Your Boats: The Collected Stories, Penguin, 1995, pp. 154-69.

Article in a Reference Book (e.g. Encyclopedias, Dictionaries)

For entries in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works, cite the entry name as you would any other work in a collection but do not include the publisher information. Also, if the reference book is organized alphabetically, as most are, do not list the volume or the page number of the article or item.

"Ideology." The American Heritage Dictionary.  3rd ed. 1997. 

A Multivolume Work

When citing only one volume of a multivolume work, include the volume number after the work's title, or after the work's editor or translator.

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria . Translated by H. E. Butler, vol. 2, Loeb-Harvard UP, 1980.

When citing more than one volume of a multivolume work, cite the total number of volumes in the work. Also, be sure in your in-text citation to provide both the volume number and page number(s) ( see "Citing Multivolume Works" on our in-text citations resource .)

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria . Translated by H. E. Butler, Loeb-Harvard UP, 1980. 4 vols.

If the volume you are using has its own title, cite the book without referring to the other volumes as if it were an independent publication.

Churchill, Winston S. The Age of Revolution . Dodd, 1957.

An Introduction, Preface, Foreword, or Afterword

When citing an introduction, a preface, a foreword, or an afterword, write the name of the author(s) of the piece you are citing. Then give the name of the part being cited, which should not be italicized or enclosed in quotation marks; in italics, provide the name of the work and the name of the author of the introduction/preface/foreword/afterword. Finish the citation with the details of publication and page range.

Farrell, Thomas B. Introduction. Norms of Rhetorical Culture , by Farrell, Yale UP, 1993, pp. 1-13.

If the writer of the piece is different from the author of the complete work , then write the full name of the principal work's author after the word "By." For example, if you were to cite Hugh Dalziel Duncan’s introduction of Kenneth Burke’s book Permanence and Change, you would write the entry as follows:

Duncan, Hugh Dalziel. Introduction. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, by Kenneth Burke, 1935, 3rd ed., U of California P, 1984, pp. xiii-xliv.

Book Published Before 1900

Original copies of books published before 1900 are usually defined by their place of publication rather than the publisher. Unless you are using a newer edition, cite the city of publication where you would normally cite the publisher.

Thoreau, Henry David. Excursions . Boston, 1863.

Italicize “The Bible” and follow it with the version you are using. Remember that your in-text (parenthetical citation) should include the name of the specific edition of the Bible, followed by an abbreviation of the book, the chapter and verse(s). (See Citing the Bible at In-Text Citations: The Basics .)

The Bible. Authorized King James Version , Oxford UP, 1998.

The Bible. The New Oxford Annotated Version , 3rd ed., Oxford UP, 2001.

The New Jerusalem Bible. Edited by Susan Jones, Doubleday, 1985.

A Government Publication

Cite the author of the publication if the author is identified. Otherwise, start with the name of the national government, followed by the agency (including any subdivisions or agencies) that serves as the organizational author. For congressional documents, be sure to include the number of the Congress and the session when the hearing was held or resolution passed as well as the report number. US government documents are typically published by the Government Printing Office.

United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Hearing on the Geopolitics of Oil . Government Printing Office, 2007. 110th Congress, 1st session, Senate Report 111-8.

United States, Government Accountability Office. Climate Change: EPA and DOE Should Do More to Encourage Progress Under Two Voluntary Programs . Government Printing Office, 2006.

Cite the title and publication information for the pamphlet just as you would a book without an author. Pamphlets and promotional materials commonly feature corporate authors (commissions, committees, or other groups that does not provide individual group member names). If the pamphlet you are citing has no author, cite as directed below. If your pamphlet has an author or a corporate author, put the name of the author (last name, first name format) or corporate author in the place where the author name typically appears at the beginning of the entry. (See also Books by a Corporate Author or Organization above.)

Women's Health: Problems of the Digestive System . American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2006.

Your Rights Under California Welfare Programs . California Department of Social Services, 2007.

Dissertations and Master's Theses

Dissertations and master's theses may be used as sources whether published or not. Unlike previous editions, MLA 8 specifies no difference in style for published/unpublished works.

The main elements of a dissertation citation are the same as those for a book: author name(s), title (italicized) , and publication date. Conclude with an indication of the document type (e.g., "PhD dissertation"). The degree-granting institution may be included before the document type (though this is not required). If the dissertation was accessed through an online repository, include it as the second container after all the other elements.

Bishop, Karen Lynn. Documenting Institutional Identity: Strategic Writing in the IUPUI Comprehensive Campaign . 2002. Purdue University, PhD dissertation.

Bile, Jeffrey. Ecology, Feminism, and a Revised Critical Rhetoric: Toward a Dialectical Partnership . 2005. Ohio University, PhD dissertation.

Mitchell, Mark. The Impact of Product Quality Reducing Events on the Value of Brand-Name Capital: Evidence from Airline Crashes and the 1982 Tylenol Poisonings.  1987. PhD dissertation.  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

List the names of corporate authors in the place where an author’s name typically appears at the beginning of the entry if the author and publisher are not the same.

Fair Housing—Fair Lending. Aspen Law & Business, 1985.

How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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Gun Violence—A Black Feminist Issue: An Excerpt From Roxane Gay’s New Essay, ‘Stand Your Ground’

“in some ways, feminism and gun ownership seem like a good fit. … but guns can be as disempowering as they are empowering.”.

Bold and personal, Roxane Gay unpacks gun culture and gun ownership in America from a Black feminist perspective in her latest work, “Stand Your Ground.” The essay is the capstone to  Roxane Gay &, a curated series of ebooks and audiobooks that lift up other voices , available exclusively on subscription hub Everand. 

In “Stand Your Ground,” Gay writes about power, agency and gun ownership: “I own a gun, but I have more questions than answers,” as she acknowledges the complexity of these issues through Audre Lorde’s famous quote: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” 

The following is an excerpt from “Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminist Reckoning with America’s Gun Problem” copyright © 2024 by Roxane Gay, used by permission from Everand Originals and available exclusively through Everand .

Too many politicians made no efforts to codify [the right to abortion] federally. They assumed they were standing firmly on solid ground when such was not the case.

I’m a Black feminist, a bad feminist, a woman who believes a more equitable present and future are possible.

I’m not an optimist, but I have seen the change we are capable of when people work together and persist. I have also seen what we lose when we take the ground upon which we stand for granted or we don’t stand our ground firmly enough.

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4, in Dobbs v. Jackson , that the Constitution does not endow people with a right to abortion. Many Americans were shocked because the right to abortion was the law of the land for nearly 50 years. An entire generation grew up understanding that they could make choices for their bodies without legislative intervention, though in more conservative states, that right was always contingent. And then, in an arbitrary legal decision, a judicial body took that right away from millions of people with uteruses. It happened because too many Americans assumed that the right to abortion was unimpeachable. Too many politicians made no efforts to codify that right federally. They assumed they were standing firmly on solid ground when such was not the case.

It is appalling that women and people with uteruses have lost such a fundamental right to bodily autonomy. And it is not lost on me that women in many states have more rights as gun owners than they do as women. The power to take a life is more constitutionally and culturally valuable than a woman’s right to live freely. I do not know how to reconcile this reality with my feminism.

I have no fondness for guns. They are, in most hands, incredibly destructive. Every year, the number of mass shootings increases. With each new atrocity, the details are more horrifying.

A concert in Vegas. An elementary school in Connecticut. An elementary school in Texas. Staggering numbers of young children, dead before they know what it means to live. A parade in a Chicago suburb. A synagogue. A grocery store. A gay nightclub. A church. Another church. So many high schools. Shopping malls. Movie theaters.

With each successive tragedy, the details become more lurid, haunting, devastating, grim. And with each passing year, it feels more dangerous to spend time in public places, wondering if you are on the precipice of becoming a statistic. 

It has not always been this way. It shouldn’t be this way. It does not need to be this way. 

The power to take a life is more constitutionally and culturally valuable than a woman’s right to live freely. I do not know how to reconcile this reality with my feminism.

There is no single reason for mass shootings, though there are a few common denominators. The vast majority of mass shooters are men. Nearly 60 percent of mass shooters have a history of domestic violence. It feels like we cannot understand or predict mass shootings, that we cannot unravel the tangled threads of violence on a massive scale, but that isn’t necessarily true. And even if these crimes were unpreventable (they aren’t), we could certainly make it far more difficult for mass shooters to have access to the weapons that make their paths of destruction possible.  

In some ways, feminism and gun ownership seem like a good fit.

A lot of feminist rhetoric centers on empowerment— creating opportunities and conditions that allow women to use their power, be treated with respect, have bodily autonomy, live on their own terms. A lot of gun rhetoric is also centered around empowerment—guns as a means of taking back power after trauma or claiming power in the name of self-defense or embracing the power of keeping our families safe.

But feminists must also grapple with the reality that however empowering guns may be, they are used against women at alarming rates—whether women are being threatened, injured or killed by a gun. The statistics are even more dire for Black, Latina and other women of color. Guns can be as disempowering as they are empowering. 

Throughout the trial, and the many months leading up to the trial, Megan Thee Stallion was defamed and discredited for standing her ground and demanding justice.

On a July evening in 2020, rapper Megan Thee Stallion was in Los Angeles, sitting in a car with rapper Tory Lanez outside a party. There was some kind of disagreement that ended with Lanez shooting at Megan Thee Stallion’s feet multiple times, and taunting her, after she got out of the vehicle. Her injuries required surgery and a lengthy recovery.

Hours after the shooting, Lanez left a meandering voicemail for Kelsey Harris, Stallion’s former friend. In the message, he said, “I was just so fucking drunk, nigga, I just didn’t even understand what the fuck was going on, bruh. […] Regardless, that’s not going to make anything right and that’s not going to make my actions right.” Though he didn’t explicitly admit he shot Stallion, the implication of and the regret for his actions were there. 

Two years later, Lanez was found guilty of assault with a firearm, illegal possession of a firearm, and negligent discharge—and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But the damage was done. Throughout the trial, and the many months leading up to the trial, Megan Thee Stallion was defamed and discredited for standing her ground and demanding justice. The severity of her injuries and the aftermath of the crime were doubted and dismissed. Hip-hop journalists, radio hosts and bloggers spread lies and misinformation and came up with all kinds of conspiracy theories to believe anything but the truth—that a Black woman was harmed and deserved justice. Rapper 50 Cent, in social media posts, doubted Stallion’s story, though later apologized. In “Circo Loco,” Canadian rapper Drake said, “This bitch lie ‘bout getting shots, but she still a stallion.” Eminem also had bars for Stallion when, in “Houdini,” he said, “If I was to ask for Megan Thee Stallion, if she would collab with me, would I really have a shot at a feat?”  

These incidents bring Malcolm X’s prophetic words into stark relief: “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” Culturally sanctioned misogynoir clarifies why addressing gun violence is not just a criminal justice issue—it is very much a Black feminist issue.

Women Rap Back: ‘It’s My Dance and It’s My Body’

The Abolitionist Aesthetics of Patrisse Cullors, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter

Kamala Harris and the Legacy of Black Women’s Leadership

U.S. democracy is at a dangerous inflection point—from the demise of abortion rights, to a lack of pay equity and parental leave, to skyrocketing maternal mortality, and attacks on trans health. Left unchecked, these crises will lead to wider gaps in political participation and representation. For 50 years, Ms . has been forging feminist journalism—reporting, rebelling and truth-telling from the front-lines, championing the Equal Rights Amendment, and centering the stories of those most impacted. With all that’s at stake for equality, we are redoubling our commitment for the next 50 years. In turn, we need your help, Support Ms . today with a donation—any amount that is meaningful to you . For as little as $5 each month , you’ll receive the print magazine along with our e-newsletters, action alerts, and invitations to Ms . Studios events and podcasts . We are grateful for your loyalty and ferocity .

About Roxane Gay

You may also like:, colorado one of eight states voting to expand abortion access in november: ‘we’re going to be a model for the rest of the country’, jd vance puts an extremist marriage agenda on the ballot.

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The Australian Professor Who Turned Breaking on Its Head

Rachael Gunn, known as B-girl Raygun, displayed some … unique moves as she competed in a field with breakers half her age. The judges and the internet were underwhelmed.

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By Dodai Stewart and Talya Minsberg

Reporting from Paris

Breaking made its debut as an Olympic sport Friday, and among the competitors was Dr. Rachael Gunn, also known as B-girl Raygun, a 36-year-old professor from Sydney, Australia, who stood out in just about every way.

By day, her research interests include “dance, gender politics, and the dynamics between theoretical and practical methodologies.” But on the world’s stage in Paris, wearing green track pants and a green polo shirt instead of the street-style outfits of her much younger fellow breakers, she competed against the 21-year-old Logan Edra of the United States, known as Logistx.

During the round robin, as Raygun and Logistx faced off, Raygun laid on her side, reached for her toes, spun around, and threw in a kangaroo hop — a nod to her homeland. She performed a move that looked something like swimming and another that could best be described as duckwalking. The high-speed back and head spins that other breakers would demonstrate were mostly absent.

The crowd cheered Raygun politely. The judges weren’t as kind. All nine voted for Logistx in both rounds of the competition; Logistx won, 18-0.

Online, Raygun’s performance quickly became a sensation, not necessarily in a flattering way.

“The more I watch the videos of Raygun, the Aussie breaker, the more I get annoyed,” one viewer posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There’s 27.7 million Australians in the world and that’s who they send to the Olympics for this inaugural event??? C’mon now!”

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Frequently asked questions

How do i cite a quote in academic writing.

Every time you quote a source , you must include a correctly formatted in-text citation . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style .

For example, a direct quote in APA is cited like this: “This is a quote” (Streefkerk, 2020, p. 5).

Every in-text citation should also correspond to a full reference at the end of your paper.

Frequently asked questions: Citing sources

A scientific citation style is a system of source citation that is used in scientific disciplines. Some commonly used scientific citation styles are:

• Chicago author-date , CSE , and Harvard , used across various sciences
• ACS , used in chemistry
• AMA , NLM , and Vancouver , used in medicine and related disciplines
• AAA , APA , and ASA , commonly used in the social sciences

There are many different citation styles used across different academic disciplines, but they fall into three basic approaches to citation:

• Parenthetical citations : Including identifying details of the source in parentheses —usually the author’s last name and the publication date, plus a page number if available ( author-date ). The publication date is occasionally omitted ( author-page ).
• Numerical citations: Including a number in brackets or superscript, corresponding to an entry in your numbered reference list.
• Note citations: Including a full citation in a footnote or endnote , which is indicated in the text with a superscript number or symbol.

A source annotation in an annotated bibliography fulfills a similar purpose to an abstract : they’re both intended to summarize the approach and key points of a source.

However, an annotation may also evaluate the source , discussing the validity and effectiveness of its arguments. Even if your annotation is purely descriptive , you may have a different perspective on the source from the author and highlight different key points.

You should never just copy text from the abstract for your annotation, as doing so constitutes plagiarism .

Most academics agree that you shouldn’t cite Wikipedia as a source in your academic writing , and universities often have rules against doing so.

This is partly because of concerns about its reliability, and partly because it’s a tertiary source. Tertiary sources are things like encyclopedias and databases that collect information from other sources rather than presenting their own evidence or analysis. Usually, only primary and secondary sources are cited in academic papers.

A Wikipedia citation usually includes the title of the article, “Wikipedia” and/or “Wikimedia Foundation,” the date the article was last updated, and the URL.

In APA Style , you’ll give the URL of the current revision of the article so that you’re sure the reader accesses the same version as you.

There’s some disagreement about whether Wikipedia can be considered a reliable source . Because it can be edited by anyone, many people argue that it’s easy for misleading information to be added to an article without the reader knowing.

Others argue that because Wikipedia articles cite their sources , and because they are worked on by so many editors, misinformation is generally removed quickly.

However, most universities state that you shouldn’t cite Wikipedia in your writing.

Hanging indents are used in reference lists in various citation styles to allow the reader to easily distinguish between entries.

You should apply a hanging indent to your reference entries in APA , MLA , and Chicago style.

A hanging indent is used to indent all lines of a paragraph except the first.

When you create a hanging indent, the first line of the paragraph starts at the border. Each subsequent line is indented 0.5 inches (1.27 cm).

APA and MLA style both use parenthetical in-text citations to cite sources and include a full list of references at the end, but they differ in other ways:

• APA in-text citations include the author name, date, and page number (Taylor, 2018, p. 23), while MLA in-text citations include only the author name and page number (Taylor 23).
• The APA reference list is titled “References,” while MLA’s version is called “ Works Cited .”
• The reference entries differ in terms of formatting and order of information.
• APA requires a title page , while MLA requires a header instead.

A parenthetical citation in Chicago author-date style includes the author’s last name, the publication date, and, if applicable, the relevant page number or page range in parentheses . Include a comma after the year, but not after the author’s name.

For example: (Swan 2003, 6)

To automatically generate accurate Chicago references, you can use Scribbr’s free Chicago reference generator .

APA Style distinguishes between parenthetical and narrative citations.

In parenthetical citations , you include all relevant source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence or clause: “Parts of the human body reflect the principles of tensegrity (Levin, 2002).”

In narrative citations , you include the author’s name in the text itself, followed by the publication date in parentheses: “Levin (2002) argues that parts of the human body reflect the principles of tensegrity.”

In a parenthetical citation in MLA style , include the author’s last name and the relevant page number or range in parentheses .

For example: (Eliot 21)

A parenthetical citation gives credit in parentheses to a source that you’re quoting or paraphrasing . It provides relevant information such as the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number(s) cited.

How you use parenthetical citations will depend on your chosen citation style . It will also depend on the type of source you are citing and the number of authors.

APA does not permit the use of ibid. This is because APA in-text citations are parenthetical and there’s no need to shorten them further.

Ibid. may be used in Chicago footnotes or endnotes .

Write “Ibid.” alone when you are citing the same page number and source as the previous citation.

When you are citing the same source, but a different page number, use ibid. followed by a comma and the relevant page number(s). For example:

• Ibid., 40–42.

Only use ibid . if you are directing the reader to a previous full citation of a source .

Ibid. only refers to the previous citation. Therefore, you should only use ibid. directly after a citation that you want to repeat.

Ibid. is an abbreviation of the Latin “ibidem,” meaning “in the same place.” Ibid. is used in citations to direct the reader to the previous source.

Signal phrases can be used in various ways and can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.

To use signal phrases effectively, include:

• The name of the scholar(s) or study you’re referencing
• An attributive tag such as “according to” or “argues that”
• The quote or idea you want to include

Different citation styles require you to use specific verb tenses when using signal phrases.

• APA Style requires you to use the past or present perfect tense when using signal phrases.
• MLA and Chicago requires you to use the present tense when using signal phrases.

Signal phrases allow you to give credit for an idea or quote to its author or originator. This helps you to:

• Establish the credentials of your sources
• Display your depth of reading and understanding of the field
• Position your own work in relation to other scholars
• Avoid plagiarism

A signal phrase is a group of words that ascribes a quote or idea to an outside source.

Signal phrases distinguish the cited idea or argument from your own writing and introduce important information including the source of the material that you are quoting , paraphrasing , or summarizing . For example:

“ Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker (1994) insists that humans possess an innate faculty for comprehending grammar.”

If you’re quoting from a text that paraphrases or summarizes other sources and cites them in parentheses , APA and Chicago both recommend retaining the citations as part of the quote. However, MLA recommends omitting citations within a quote:

• APA: Smith states that “the literature on this topic (Jones, 2015; Sill, 2019; Paulson, 2020) shows no clear consensus” (Smith, 2019, p. 4).
• MLA: Smith states that “the literature on this topic shows no clear consensus” (Smith, 2019, p. 4).

Footnote or endnote numbers that appear within quoted text should be omitted in all styles.

If you want to cite an indirect source (one you’ve only seen quoted in another source), either locate the original source or use the phrase “as cited in” in your citation.

In scientific subjects, the information itself is more important than how it was expressed, so quoting should generally be kept to a minimum. In the arts and humanities, however, well-chosen quotes are often essential to a good paper.

In social sciences, it varies. If your research is mainly quantitative , you won’t include many quotes, but if it’s more qualitative , you may need to quote from the data you collected .

As a general guideline, quotes should take up no more than 5–10% of your paper. If in doubt, check with your instructor or supervisor how much quoting is appropriate in your field.

To present information from other sources in academic writing , it’s best to paraphrase in most cases. This shows that you’ve understood the ideas you’re discussing and incorporates them into your text smoothly.

It’s appropriate to quote when:

• Changing the phrasing would distort the meaning of the original text
• You want to discuss the author’s language choices (e.g., in literary analysis )
• You’re presenting a precise definition
• You’re looking in depth at a specific claim

To paraphrase effectively, don’t just take the original sentence and swap out some of the words for synonyms. Instead, try:

• Reformulating the sentence (e.g., change active to passive , or start from a different point)
• Combining information from multiple sentences into one
• Leaving out information from the original that isn’t relevant to your point
• Using synonyms where they don’t distort the meaning

The main point is to ensure you don’t just copy the structure of the original text, but instead reformulate the idea in your own words.

“ Et al. ” is an abbreviation of the Latin term “et alia,” which means “and others.” It’s used in source citations to save space when there are too many authors to name them all.

Guidelines for using “et al.” differ depending on the citation style you’re following:

To insert endnotes in Microsoft Word, follow the steps below:

• Click on the spot in the text where you want the endnote to show up.
• In the “References” tab at the top, select “Insert Endnote.”
• Type whatever text you want into the endnote.

If you need to change the type of notes used in a Word document from footnotes to endnotes , or the other way around, follow these steps:

• Open the “References” tab, and click the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the “Footnotes” section.
• In the pop-up window, click on “Convert…”
• Choose the option you need, and click “OK.”

To insert a footnote automatically in a Word document:

• Click on the point in the text where the footnote should appear
• Select the “References” tab at the top and then click on “Insert Footnote”
• Type the text you want into the footnote that appears at the bottom of the page

Footnotes are notes indicated in your text with numbers and placed at the bottom of the page. They’re used to provide:

• Citations (e.g., in Chicago notes and bibliography )
• Additional information that would disrupt the flow of the main text

Be sparing in your use of footnotes (other than citation footnotes), and consider whether the information you’re adding is relevant for the reader.

Footnotes appear at the bottom of the page they refer to. This is convenient for the reader but may cause your text to look cluttered if there are a lot of footnotes.

Endnotes appear all together at the end of the whole text. This may be less convenient for the reader but reduces clutter.

Both footnotes and endnotes are used in the same way: to cite sources or add extra information. You should usually choose one or the other to use in your text, not both.

An in-text citation is an acknowledgement you include in your text whenever you quote or paraphrase a source. It usually gives the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page number of the relevant text. In-text citations allow the reader to look up the full source information in your reference list and see your sources for themselves.

If you are reusing content or data you used in a previous assignment, make sure to cite yourself. You can cite yourself just as you would cite any other source: simply follow the directions for that source type in the citation style you are using.

Keep in mind that reusing your previous work can be considered self-plagiarism , so make sure you ask your professor or consult your university’s handbook before doing so.

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test  and follow these guidelines:

• The information should be up to date and current.
• The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
• The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
• For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

Peer review is a process of evaluating submissions to an academic journal. Utilizing rigorous criteria, a panel of reviewers in the same subject area decide whether to accept each submission for publication. For this reason, academic journals are often considered among the most credible sources you can use in a research project– provided that the journal itself is trustworthy and well-regarded.

Academic dishonesty can be intentional or unintentional, ranging from something as simple as claiming to have read something you didn’t to copying your neighbor’s answers on an exam.

You can commit academic dishonesty with the best of intentions, such as helping a friend cheat on a paper. Severe academic dishonesty can include buying a pre-written essay or the answers to a multiple-choice test, or falsifying a medical emergency to avoid taking a final exam.

Academic dishonesty refers to deceitful or misleading behavior in an academic setting. Academic dishonesty can occur intentionally or unintentionally, and varies in severity.

It can encompass paying for a pre-written essay, cheating on an exam, or committing plagiarism . It can also include helping others cheat, copying a friend’s homework answers, or even pretending to be sick to miss an exam.

Academic dishonesty doesn’t just occur in a classroom setting, but also in research and other academic-adjacent fields.

To apply a hanging indent to your reference list or Works Cited list in Word or Google Docs, follow the steps below.

Microsoft Word:

• Highlight the whole list and right click to open the Paragraph options.
• Under Indentation > Special , choose Hanging from the dropdown menu.
• Set the indent to 0.5 inches or 1.27cm.

Google Docs:

• Highlight the whole list and click on Format >  Align and indent >  Indentation options .
• Under  Special indent , choose Hanging from the dropdown menu.

When the hanging indent is applied, for each reference, every line except the first is indented. This helps the reader see where one entry ends and the next begins.

For a published interview (whether in video , audio, or print form ), you should always include a citation , just as you would for any other source.

For an interview you conducted yourself , formally or informally, you often don’t need a citation and can just refer to it in the text or in a footnote , since the reader won’t be able to look them up anyway. MLA , however, still recommends including citations for your own interviews.

The main elements included in a newspaper interview citation across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the names of the interviewer and interviewee, the interview title, the publication date, the name of the newspaper, and a URL (for online sources).

The information is presented differently in different citation styles. One key difference is that APA advises listing the interviewer in the author position, while MLA and Chicago advise listing the interviewee first.

The elements included in a newspaper article citation across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the author name, the article title, the publication date, the newspaper name, and the URL if the article was accessed online .

In APA and MLA, the page numbers of the article appear in place of the URL if the article was accessed in print. No page numbers are used in Chicago newspaper citations.

Untitled sources (e.g. some images ) are usually cited using a short descriptive text in place of the title. In APA Style , this description appears in brackets: [Chair of stained oak]. In MLA and Chicago styles, no brackets are used: Chair of stained oak.

For social media posts, which are usually untitled, quote the initial words of the post in place of the title: the first 160 characters in Chicago , or the first 20 words in APA . E.g. Biden, J. [@JoeBiden]. “The American Rescue Plan means a $7,000 check for a single mom of four. It means more support to safely.”

MLA recommends quoting the full post for something short like a tweet, and just describing the post if it’s longer.

The main elements included in image citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the name of the image’s creator, the image title, the year (or more precise date) of publication, and details of the container in which the image was found (e.g. a museum, book , website ).

In APA and Chicago style, it’s standard to also include a description of the image’s format (e.g. “Photograph” or “Oil on canvas”). This sort of information may be included in MLA too, but is not mandatory.

The main elements included in a lecture citation across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the name of the speaker, the lecture title, the date it took place, the course or event it was part of, and the institution it took place at.

For transcripts or recordings of lectures/speeches, other details like the URL, the name of the book or website , and the length of the recording may be included instead of information about the event and institution.

The main elements included in a YouTube video citation across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the name of the author/uploader, the title of the video, the publication date, and the URL.

The format in which this information appears is different for each style.

All styles also recommend using timestamps as a locator in the in-text citation or Chicago footnote .

Each annotation in an annotated bibliography is usually between 50 and 200 words long. Longer annotations may be divided into paragraphs .

The content of the annotation varies according to your assignment. An annotation can be descriptive, meaning it just describes the source objectively; evaluative, meaning it assesses its usefulness; or reflective, meaning it explains how the source will be used in your own research .

Any credible sources on your topic can be included in an annotated bibliography . The exact sources you cover will vary depending on the assignment, but you should usually focus on collecting journal articles and scholarly books . When in doubt, utilize the CRAAP test !

An annotated bibliography is an assignment where you collect sources on a specific topic and write an annotation for each source. An annotation is a short text that describes and sometimes evaluates the source.

The elements included in journal article citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the name(s) of the author(s), the title of the article, the year of publication, the name of the journal, the volume and issue numbers, the page range of the article, and, when accessed online, the DOI or URL.

In MLA and Chicago style, you also include the specific month or season of publication alongside the year, when this information is available.

In APA , MLA , and Chicago style citations for sources that don’t list a specific author (e.g. many websites ), you can usually list the organization responsible for the source as the author.

If the organization is the same as the website or publisher, you shouldn’t repeat it twice in your reference:

• In APA and Chicago, omit the website or publisher name later in the reference.
• In MLA, omit the author element at the start of the reference, and cite the source title instead.

If there’s no appropriate organization to list as author, you will usually have to begin the citation and reference entry with the title of the source instead.

The main elements included in website citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the author, the date of publication, the page title, the website name, and the URL. The information is presented differently in each style.

When you want to cite a specific passage in a source without page numbers (e.g. an e-book or website ), all the main citation styles recommend using an alternate locator in your in-text citation . You might use a heading or chapter number, e.g. (Smith, 2016, ch. 1)

In APA Style , you can count the paragraph numbers in a text to identify a location by paragraph number. MLA and Chicago recommend that you only use paragraph numbers if they’re explicitly marked in the text.

For audiovisual sources (e.g. videos ), all styles recommend using a timestamp to show a specific point in the video when relevant.

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (Latin for “and others”) is used to shorten citations of sources with multiple authors.

“Et al.” is used in APA in-text citations of sources with 3+ authors, e.g. (Smith et al., 2019). It is not used in APA reference entries .

Use “et al.” for 3+ authors in MLA in-text citations and Works Cited entries.

Use “et al.” for 4+ authors in a Chicago in-text citation , and for 10+ authors in a Chicago bibliography entry.

Check if your university or course guidelines specify which citation style to use. If the choice is left up to you, consider which style is most commonly used in your field.

• APA Style is the most popular citation style, widely used in the social and behavioral sciences.
• MLA style is the second most popular, used mainly in the humanities.
• Chicago notes and bibliography style is also popular in the humanities, especially history.
• Chicago author-date style tends to be used in the sciences.

Other more specialized styles exist for certain fields, such as Bluebook and OSCOLA for law.

The most important thing is to choose one style and use it consistently throughout your text.

The main elements included in all book citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the author, the title, the year of publication, and the name of the publisher. A page number is also included in in-text citations to highlight the specific passage cited.

In Chicago style and in the 6th edition of APA Style , the location of the publisher is also included, e.g. London: Penguin.

A block quote is a long quote formatted as a separate “block” of text. Instead of using quotation marks , you place the quote on a new line, and indent the entire quote to mark it apart from your own words.

The rules for when to apply block quote formatting depend on the citation style:

• APA block quotes are 40 words or longer.
• MLA block quotes are more than 4 lines of prose or 3 lines of poetry.
• Chicago block quotes are longer than 100 words.

In academic writing , there are three main situations where quoting is the best choice:

• To analyze the author’s language (e.g., in a literary analysis essay )
• To give evidence from primary sources
• To accurately present a precise definition or argument

Don’t overuse quotes; your own voice should be dominant. If you just want to provide information from a source, it’s usually better to paraphrase or summarize .

A quote is an exact copy of someone else’s words, usually enclosed in quotation marks and credited to the original author or speaker.

The DOI is usually clearly visible when you open a journal article on an academic database. It is often listed near the publication date, and includes “doi.org” or “DOI:”. If the database has a “cite this article” button, this should also produce a citation with the DOI included.

If you can’t find the DOI, you can search on Crossref using information like the author, the article title, and the journal name.

A DOI is a unique identifier for a digital document. DOIs are important in academic citation because they are more permanent than URLs, ensuring that your reader can reliably locate the source.

Journal articles and ebooks can often be found on multiple different websites and databases. The URL of the page where an article is hosted can be changed or removed over time, but a DOI is linked to the specific document and never changes.

When a book’s chapters are written by different authors, you should cite the specific chapter you are referring to.

When all the chapters are written by the same author (or group of authors), you should usually cite the entire book, but some styles include exceptions to this.

• In APA Style , single-author books should always be cited as a whole, even if you only quote or paraphrase from one chapter.
• In MLA Style , if a single-author book is a collection of stand-alone works (e.g. short stories ), you should cite the individual work.
• In Chicago Style , you may choose to cite a single chapter of a single-author book if you feel it is more appropriate than citing the whole book.

Articles in newspapers and magazines can be primary or secondary depending on the focus of your research.

In historical studies, old articles are used as primary sources that give direct evidence about the time period. In social and communication studies, articles are used as primary sources to analyze language and social relations (for example, by conducting content analysis or discourse analysis ).

If you are not analyzing the article itself, but only using it for background information or facts about your topic, then the article is a secondary source.

A fictional movie is usually a primary source. A documentary can be either primary or secondary depending on the context.

If you are directly analyzing some aspect of the movie itself – for example, the cinematography, narrative techniques, or social context – the movie is a primary source.

If you use the movie for background information or analysis about your topic – for example, to learn about a historical event or a scientific discovery – the movie is a secondary source.

Whether it’s primary or secondary, always properly cite the movie in the citation style you are using. Learn how to create an MLA movie citation or an APA movie citation .

To determine if a source is primary or secondary, ask yourself:

• Was the source created by someone directly involved in the events you’re studying (primary), or by another researcher (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary), or does it summarize information from other sources (secondary)?
• Are you directly analyzing the source itself (primary), or only using it for background information (secondary)?

Some types of source are nearly always primary: works of art and literature, raw statistical data, official documents and records, and personal communications (e.g. letters, interviews ). If you use one of these in your research, it is probably a primary source.

Primary sources are often considered the most credible in terms of providing evidence for your argument, as they give you direct evidence of what you are researching. However, it’s up to you to ensure the information they provide is reliable and accurate.

Always make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

Common examples of secondary sources include academic books, journal articles , reviews, essays , and textbooks.

Anything that summarizes, evaluates or interprets primary sources can be a secondary source. If a source gives you an overview of background information or presents another researcher’s ideas on your topic, it is probably a secondary source.

Common examples of primary sources include interview transcripts , photographs, novels, paintings, films, historical documents, and official statistics.

Anything you directly analyze or use as first-hand evidence can be a primary source, including qualitative or quantitative data that you collected yourself.

The Scribbr Citation Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js . It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Citation Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github .

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