How to Write In-Text Citations
Still confused on how to cite sources within the text correctly?
Most students are now given a task to write an in-text citation especially when using MLA styles. Not all will love this part since it can be very confusing in their part to do it. But the solution for that problem is to know how it works and how are you going to apply it into writing.
In-text citation aids your readers to the corresponding information that is found at the end of the paper. This is the clever thing to do in order for them to determine the real source of information that the writer used. Since every writer needs a real source of information to support their writings, they may base their ideas to the real source of information rather plagiarizing it.
Readers will now conclude to whom the source of information is coming from but as of the writer’s part, they might have a little problem on how to do it the right way. That can be a not so easy task for them but the truth is, anyone can easily deal on how to write an in-text citation for their school’s requirements or for any professional work assignments.
Tasked to craft your piece in an MLA writing style, you’ll need to use parenthetical citations, a scary-sounding term for what’s largely a simple way of referencing source documents. What does it really mean?
Put simply, these in-text citations are placeholders intended to tell the reader where a particular piece of information is sourced from. To make the reference clear, the citation is placed at the end of the statement. Directly from an in-text citation, a reader should be able to flip into the list of your various reference sources and know exactly where the information is from. For brevity’s sake, the style uses a standard format for making the citation (surname and page number, like Johnson 85), which means the information is lifted from a work authored by Johnson (which you will list on the paper’s Works Cited section) from page 85.
So when do you use an in-text citation? Pretty much any time that a piece of information appears in your text that you can credit to one of your sources. This includes paraphrased items, direct quotes, anecdotes, statistics and report findings.
Why not just mention the source as part of the sentence? Because it’s distracting. Complex papers, especially those for class, are usually filled with research from a large number of source materials. Can you really imagine mentioning the title, author and page number of a particular source of information every sentence?
Don’t get confuse on where, when and how to write and in-text citation. Just focus on the right and then things will go easily and smoothly as what you want it to be.
Do note that some grammar software may not be familiar with MLA Style (although most of them should be), so they may flag this form of citation as an error. Just realize that it’s not (or add it to the rules, if it’s editable) and you’ll be fine.
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