In October, when you were working on your analyses, I distributed a handout on quotations and parenthetical citations. As you continue to work on your final essays and annotated bibliographies, review that handout as well as the notes that follow.
If your source is an unpaginated text, your parenthetical citation will include the abbreviation par. for paragraph, followed by the paragraph number. If your source is a paginated text, your parenthetical citation will include the page number. Include the author’s last name before par. or the page number only if you do not name the author in the sentence.
Sample Quotations and Parenthetical Citations
- The author of “The Falling Man” depicts the other victims who jumped from the Twin Towers as “look[ing] confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain” (Junod par. 1).
- In “The Falling Man,” Tom Junod depicts the other victims who jumped from the Twin Towers as “look[ing] confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain” (par. 1).
- The author of “Scrabble is a Lousy Game” claims that the game “treats language the way computers do–as arbitrarily ordered codes stored in a computer chip” (Kay par. 7).
- In “Scrabble is a Lousy Game,” Jonathan Kay argues that the game “treats language the way computers do–as arbitrarily ordered codes stored in a computer chip” (par. 7).
- “The Case for Writing Longhand” offers one journalist’s observation that “[t]he quality of the thinking and the writing feels higher to me when revising by hand” (Anderson qtd. in Bahr par. 13).
- “The Case for Writing Longhand” offers Sam Anderson’s insight on the benefits of writing longhand as part of the revision process: “The quality of the thinking and the writing feels higher to me” (qtd. in Bahr par. 13).
In the samples above, brackets indicate an alteration. If you change the case of a letter or the tense of a verb, look to the sample quotations above with brackets as models.
The last two sample parenthetical citations in the list above include qtd. in because the words quoted are Sam Anderson’s, but the author of the article is Sarah Bahr.
If you omit words within a quotation, include an ellipsis. For example:
In “Skim Reading is the New Normal,” Maryanne Wolf asserts that “[w]e need to cultivate a . . . ‘bi-literate’ reading brain capable of the deepest forms of thought in either digital or traditional mediums” (par. 12).
Do not include an ellipsis at the beginning or end of a quotation to indicate an omission. When you are quoting a text, it’s understood that additional lines of text usually precede and follow the words you are quoting.
If you are quoting a text by two authors and do not include their names in the signal phrase, include their last last names in the parenthetical citation, followed by the page number or par. plus the paragraph number, for example: (Jones and Smith 3) or (Jones and Smith par. 5).
If you are quoting a text by three or more authors and do not include their names in the signal phrase, include the first author’s last name followed by et al. (Latin for “and the rest “) in the parenthetical citation, followed by the page number or par. plus the paragraph number, for example: (Lucas et. al 7) or (Lucas et al. par. 9).
Works Cited
Bahr, Sarah. “The Case for Writing Longhand.” New York Times, Jan 21, 2022. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/case-writing-longhand/docview/2621453011/se-2.
Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.
Kay, Jonathan. “Scrabble is a Lousy Game.” The Wall Street Journal, 4 Oct. 2018. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com /newspapers/scrabble-is-lousy-game-why-would-anyone-play/docview/2116081665/se-2?accountid=11411.
Wolf, Maryanne. “Skim Reading is the New Normal. The Effect on Society is Profound.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf.
For more information on quotations and parenthetical citations, see the MLA Style Center and OWL, Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab.
Next Up
Tomorrow in class you will compose a reflective essay on the processes of researching and writing your final essay and annotated bibliography.
Jane Lucas 