MLA Citation

In-text citations are included in main body of your paper. They give your reader a quick reference for the source of information and quotations you use in your writing. An in-text citation should contain enough information for the reader to identify the source in the works cited page. 

Basics

The first component of an in-text citation is the first element of the source's citation in the works cited page, usually the author's last name. For instances where multiple sources have authors with the same last name, include the first initial or first name before the last name. If the source does not include a personal author, use a shortened form of the title instead. The shortened title should also be added after the author in cases where you cite multiple works by the same author. 

The in-text citation also includes a location number to help the reader find where in the source you are citing, such as a page number, paragraph number, line number, or time stamp in a multimedia source. If the source does not include location numbers, such as many Web sources, then you do not need to include one. 

A generic in-text citation comes together to look like this: 

(Author location number)

This is placed at the end of the sentence where your quotation is included, before the closing punctuation. 

You can also incorporate the author before the end of the quotation:

According to Author, this quotation "is a really great quotation" (location number). 

Examples

Much of the scholarship on Bertha in Jane Eyre has "focused on the particulars of her confinement in that misnamed space" (Kreisel 102). 

According to Funnell and Dodds, touch "takes place in particular social contexts and carries with it definite notions of power" (123). 

Perhaps the attention placed on the nascent Digital Humanities is "just the latest manifestation of and response to [the] crisis of confidence in the humanities" (Hall).

However, Crehan notes that, while an improvement, there were also issues with how early feminist anthropologists used the concept of "woman," for example how

this supposedly universal category, "woman," tended in practice to assume the shape of what "being a woman" meant in the anthropologist's own society. Not only, it was argued — particularly by anthropologists of color — did this overlook important differences between societies; it also ignored important differences ... within the feminist anthropologists' own societies (45). 

As of February 2016, the Billy Ireland Museum was aware of 20 comics creators with a connection to Ohio State University ("Ohio Cartoonists").