Writing a Paper for Me

In Text (Parenthetical) Citation: This is often easier than footnotes or endnotes. I don't care which you use.

Punctuation and fonts:

Quoted material:

End punctuation ALWAYS goes outside the parenthetical citation. Some students get confused because the citation may cover materials beyond the sentence itself. The rule of thumb is that the citation covers all material covered since the previous citation. However, be very careful not to run citation logic beyond a single paragraph. Your audience cannot be expected to follow your citation easily. Note how its done: close quote, open parens, data, close parens, close punctuation of rsentence.
Example:

"Parents know in advance, and with near certainty, that they will be addicted to their children" (Landsburg).

When a quotation is formally introduced with a full sentence, use a colon before the quotation. Otherwise a comma or no punctuation is used. Note that the end punctuation is outside the parenthesis.
Example:

In response to Victor Brombert's 1990 MLA presidential address on the "politics of critical language," one correspondent suggests that "some literary scholars envy the scientists their wonderful jargon with its certainty and precision and thus wish to emulate it by creating formidably technical-sounding words of their own" (Mitchell).

To introduce and identify the source of a long quotation (one comprising more than four lines in your essay or research paper), use a previewing sentence that ends in a colon. By briefly announcing the content of an extended quotation, a previewing sentence tells readers what to look for in the quotation. Indent the block quotation ten spaces (or two paragraph indents) from the left margin. At the end of the block quotation, cite the source in parentheses after the final punctuation mark.
Example:

That the heroic and historically important deeds of previously unknown women should be included in history books is evident from the following notice:

Event: April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington.

On the night of April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington, age 16, rode through towns in New York and Connecticut to warn that the Redcoats were coming. . . to Danbury, CT. All very Paul Reverish, except Sybil completed HER ride, and SHE thus gathered enough volunteers to help beat back the British the next day. Her ride was twice the distance of Revere's. No poet immortalized (and faked) her accomplishments, but at least her hometown was renamed after her. However, recently the National Rifle Association established a Sybil Ludington women's "freedom" award for meritorious service in furthering the purposes of the NRA as well as use of firearms in competition or in actual life-threatening situations although Sybil never fired a gun. (Stuber)

Here is the Works Cited entry: Note that the first date is it's publication, while the second is the date it was found by the author of the paper. To potentially confuse things further, there is a date in the title. That is why university students need to learn to read these things.

Stuber, Irene. "April 26, 1996: Episode 638." Women of Achievement and Herstory: A Frequently-Appearing Newsletter. 3 May 1996. 6 Jan, 2006. http://www.academic.marist.edu/woa/ index.htm.

Italics or underline for the titles of books and other longer works. Saint Martin's Press suggests that

The MLA Handbook provides the following advice for the use of italics and underlining in word-processed texts intended for print-only publication:

Many word-processing programs and computer printers permit the reproduction of italic type. In material that will be graded, edited or typeset, however, the type style of every letter and punctuation mark must be easily recognizable. Italic type is sometimes not distinctive enough for this purpose, and you can avoid ambiguity by using underlining when you intend italics. If you wish to use italics rather than underlining, check your instructor's or editor's preferences. (94)

However, when composing in HTML, don't substitute underlining for italics, because underlining in HTML indicates that the underlined text is an active hypertext link. (All HTML editing programs automatically underline any text linked to another hypertext or Web site.) Though this material is designed to reside on the web, I have left some book and other long titles underlined and others in italics so that you can see how they would look each way. Strictly speaking, of course, it would all be in italics. Technology always manages to make a hash of these things, and at this juncture Firefox's browser is not underlining live spots which confuses everything all over again.

When composing Web documents, use italics for titles, for emphasis, and for words, letters, and numbers referred to as such. When you write with programs such as email that don't allow italics, type an underscore mark _like this_ before and after text you would otherwise italicize or underline.

Introduced formally:
(colon) Piercy Shelley claims poets have the power to mold civilizations: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (210).

As part of your sentence: Poets have the power to mold civilizations as "unacknowledged legislators of the world" (Shelley 210).

Introduced with he/she "says," "claims,"
etc.
(comma) Piercy Shelley argues, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world (210).

Single author work with name mentioned in sentence: If you mention the author's full or last name in your sentence, put the page number(s) in parentheses at the end of the quotation or paraphrase. When quoting, especially from literature, it's important to clarify who is speaking and in what context, for a character's (narrator's/author's) perspective can also give reader's information about the quotation. Note: the period for the sentence appears after the parentheses.

In Miguel Cervantes' novel Don Quixote, Sancho Panza insists upon the veracity
of history about the "mannish" shepherdess and her lover by arguing, "but the
man who told me this story said that it was so true and authentic that when I told
it to anyone else I could swear on my oath that I had seen it all" (153).

Single author, name omitted from sentence: If the author's last name is not mentioned in your sentence, put the last name and the page number(s) in parentheses at the end of the paraphrase or quotation but inside the closing punctuation of the sentence: close quote, open parens, data, close parens, close punctuation of rsentence.

Don Quixote interrupts Sancho's telling of the Shepherd's story saying, it "is
natural to women . . . to scorn those who love them, and love those who loathe
them" (Cervantes 153).

Quotation that runs four or more lines

Lengthy quotations need to be blocked. Set the quotation off from your text by beginning the blocked quotation on the next line. If your essay is double-spaced, maintain double-spacing, and indent the quotation ten spaces from the left margin. Because the quotation is blocked, quotation marks are not used. Generally a colon introduces the blocked quotation; and the period, rather than appearing after the parentheses, is located before them. Note that here the punctuation goes first and then the parenthetical expression of the author and page. This is because more than one line of quoted text is involved.

The narrator of Don Quixote begins the novel by calling readers lazy, even as he offers an excuse for the apparent lameness of his story:
Idle reader, you can believe without any oath of mine that I would wish this book, as the child of my brain, to be the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable. But I have been unable to transgress the order of nature, by which like gives birth to like. And so, what could my sterile and ill-cultivated genius beget but the story of a lean, shriveled, whimsical child, full of varied fancies that no one else has ever imagined--much like one engendered in prison, where every discomfort has its seat and every dismal sound its habitation? (Cervantes 25)

More than three authors for a single source: If the work you site is written by more than three authors, use first author's name and et al to cover the rest. Otherwise use all authors' names in order that they appear on title page.

Mary Stevens et al found that most primates are capable of expressing a wide
range of emotions (27).

Multiple sources by one author: If you have more than one source by the same author, use a short form of the title as well. (The shortened title, like a full title of a book, would be underlined)

Primates' use sign language demonstrates the sophistication of their potential
language skills (Stevens, Primates' Language Skills 15).

Anonymous Source: If your source is anonymous, either the full title of the source or an abbreviated version of it should be substituted. When abbreviating a title, begin with the first key word. For instance, the title "Beware of Television Violence: Your Teens Act Out" shouldn't be shorted to "Teens Act Out" because then readers would look under the "t" portion of the Works Cited page. Anonymous works appear on the Works Cited page alphabetized by the first word of the title, excluding "the" and "a/an."

And editorial in a local newspaper argues that studies show teens act out
violently after viewing graphic violence on television ("Beware" A1+).

Sources that cite other sources: Generally you should take information from the original source, but when unable to do so, use "qtd. in" to indicate that the material quoted or paraphrased is quoted in X work. For example,

Elizabeth Gaskell acknowledged that Charlotte Bronte really felt that her father
was an "exceptionally studious man" (qtd. in Jones 220).

2002; Last revised July 14, 2008
Dr. Bonnie Duncan
bduncan@millersville.edu
1-717-871-2080
English Department
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551

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