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Citing in your paper

When you share your ideas in a paper, often you'll want to talk about other people's ideas, too. To "cite" someone or something in a paper is to mention something they've said or written, while giving them proper credit.

The MLA gives us specific ways to give credit in our papers. They're called "in-text citations" because you mention them alongside your own ideas right in your paper, instead of in an appendix at the end of your paper. Sometimes they're called "parenthetical citations," because in MLA format you use parentheses to point out things like the author name and page number of something you just mentioned.

To see how to format your in-text citations, check out the MLA Formatting & Style Guide on the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) website. Find "MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics" in the left-hand column.

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