

If you don’t know the author, use the work’s title or a shortened version of the title in the parentheses.Ī powerful editorial in last week’s paper asserts that healthy liver donor Mike Hurewitz died because of “frightening” faulty postoperative care (“Every Patient’s Nightmare”). For example, it sternly warns, “If you are overpaid, we will recover any payments not due you” (Social Security Administration 12). government can be direct when it wants to be. A19-24).Īcknowledge the organization either in a signal phrase or in parentheses. One popular survey of American literature breaks the contents into sixteen thematic groupings (Anderson et al.


Wilson).įor a work by two or three authors, name all the authors, either in a signal phrase or in the parentheses.Ĭarlson and Ventura’s stated goal is to introduce Julio Cortázar, Marjorie Agosín, and other Latin American writers to an audience of English-speaking adolescents (v).įor a work with four or more authors, either mention all their names or include just the name of the first author followed by et al., Latin for “and others.” Wilson) but also to writing of all periods, whereas magical is often used in writing about Arthurian romances (A. Imaginative applies not only to modern literature (E. Give the author’s first name in any signal phrase or the author’s first initial in the parenthetical reference. Understanding power in the Near East requires “Western leaders who know when to intervene, and do so without illusions” (Kaplan, Eastward 330). Include a comma between author and title if you include both in the parentheses. Kaplan insists that understanding power in the Near East requires “Western leaders who know when to intervene, and do so without illusions” ( Eastward 330).
#Mla signal phrases full
Give the full title if it’s brief otherwise, give a short version. If you cite multiple works by one author, include the title of the work you are citing either in the signal phrase or in parentheses. Notice that in the example above, the parenthetical reference comes after the closing quotation marks but before the period at the end of the sentence. Whether you use a signal phrase and parentheses or parentheses only, try to put the parenthetical documentation at the end of the sentence or as close as possible to the material you’ve cited - without awkwardly interrupting the sentence. Do not use punctuation between the name and the page number(s).Īdams is said to have had “the hands of a man accustomed to pruning his own trees, cutting his own hay, and splitting his own firewood” (McCullough 18). If you do not mention the author in a signal phrase, put his or her last name in parentheses along with the page number(s).
#Mla signal phrases manual
McCullough describes John Adams’s hands as those of someone used to manual labor (18). If you mention the author in a SIGNAL PHRASE, put only the page number(s) in parentheses. The examples illustrate the MLA style of using quotation marks around titles of short works and italicizing titles of long works. The first examples in this chapter show basic in-text documentation of a work by one author. As you cite each source, you will need to decide whether or not to name the author in a signal phrase - “as Toni Morrison writes” - or in parentheses - “(Morrison 24).”

In your text, you have three options for citing a source: QUOTING, PARAPHRASING, and SUMMARIZING. Brief documentation in your text makes clear to your reader what you took from a source and where in the source you found the information.
