Quoting Directly When you quote directly from a source, enclose the quoted section in quotation marks. Add an in-text citation at the end of the quote with the author name and page number, like this: “Here’s a direct quote” (Smith 8). “Here’s a direct quote” (“Trouble” 22).

A short quotation contains no more than four lines of quoted material. Normal MLA formatting should be used when incorporating a short quotation into your work.

Do commas and periods go inside or outside quotation marks? Commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks in American English; dashes, colons, and semicolons almost always go outside the quotation marks; question marks and exclamation marks sometimes go inside, sometimes stay outside.

This would traditionally be with the title and then the date of publication (Title of Book, year of publication). As you are writing your paper you may want in the middle of a sentence to “directly cite something that is very important” (Author, publication year, p. page number of quote) to the meaning of your paper.

A reference or citation can be positioned at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence. Following are the examples for both APA 7th and APA 6th referencing style. When multiple studies support what you have to say, you can also include mid-sentence in-text citations.

APA in-text citation style uses the author’s last name and the year of publication, for example: (Field, 2005). For direct quotations, include the page number as well, for example: (Field, 2005, p. 14).

In-text references provide a means for you to give credit when using others’ words, facts, or ideas. Place the parenthetical reference where a natural pause would occur, as near as possible to the material documented. In-text citations are typically placed at the end of a quote, sentence, or paragraph.

If you are citing a source that has multiple authors, follow these basic steps.

1. 2 Authors: Always cite both authors’ names in-text everytime you reference them.
2. 6 or More Authors: If a document has six or more authors, simply provide the last name of the first author with “et al.” from the first citation to the last.

In et al., et should not be followed by a period. Only “al” should be followed by a period. Since et al. is plural, it should always be a substitute for more than one name. In the case that et al. would stand in for just one author, write the author’s name instead.

Citing Works With Three or More Authors Include only the last name of the first author, followed by “et al.” and the year published in all narrative and parenthetical citations APA. Note: The reference entry should list the names of up to 20 authors.

MLA uses “et al.” for works with three or more authors, while Chicago calls for using it with four or more authors. APA format requires that you cite all of the authors at the first mention if there are three, four, or five, and use “et al.” afterward.

Using Parenthetical (In-Text) Citations. Include a parenthetical citation when you refer to, summarize, paraphrase, or quote from another source. MLA parenthetical citation style uses the author’s last name and a page number; for example: (Field 122).

NOTE: The in-text citation for works with three or more authors is shortened to the first author’s name followed by et al. and the year.

If a work has two authors, separate their names with an ampersand (&) in a parenthetical citation or “and” in a narrative citation. If there are three or more authors, only include the first author’s last name followed by “et al.”, meaning “and others”.

What would an in-text citation include when the author of a source is unknown? It would include the first few words of the Reference list entry of that work and the year. It would only include the word anonymous if the work’s author is stated as anonymous.

If you do not include the author’s name in the text of the sentence, place the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page number in parentheses after the quotation. She stated, “Students often had difficulty using APA style” (Jones, 1998, p. 199), but she did not offer an explanation as to why.

Author unknown If a source has no author, the works cited entry will begin with the title. In your in-text citation, either use the complete title in a signal phrase or use a short form of the title in parentheses.

All APA reference list entries contain four main components: author, date, title, and source.

For example, MLA style requires you to provide the page number of your citation in-text, but not the year, while APA style asks you to place a comma between author and year.

MLA in-text citation style uses the author’s last name and the page number from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken, for example: (Smith 163). If the source does not use page numbers, do not include a number in the parenthetical citation: (Smith).

An MLA website citation includes the author’s name, the title of the page (in quotation marks), the name of the website (in italics), the publication date, and the URL (without “https://”)….Citing an entire website.

The APA Style rules encourage authors to place a citation after each instance of paraphrased or quoted information, versus the citation always appearing at the end of a sentence: “If the quotation appears in mid-sentence, end the passage with quotation marks, cite the source in parentheses immediately after the …

If you are paraphrasing from one source throughout a paragraph, don’t worry about putting a citation after every sentence. Putting a citation at the end of the paragraph is fine (there should be at least one citation at the end of each paragraph if the material is paraphrased).

To cite a report in a reference entry, include the author, year, title of the report, the report number (if there is one), and the publisher. In-text citations would follow the typical format of including the author (or authoring organization) and year of publication.

Quotation marks should be placed around titles of shorter works (articles, poems, short stories or essays). Alphabetize your Works Cited Page including “A”, “An”, or “The” as the first word of a title.

From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English in quoteswords that are in quotes are written with quotation marks around them to show that someone said those words → quoteExamples from the Corpusin quotes• I will use the term stage where it appears in quotes, but beyond this section I will use the term level.

Proper Punctuation – Quotes

1. If you start by telling who said it, use a comma and then the first quotation mark.
2. If you put the quote first and then tell who said it, use a comma at the end of the sentence, and then the second quotation mark.
3. Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks if it is a direct quote.