MLA Style
IN-TEXT DOCUMENTATION
As Lester Faigley puts it, "The world has become a bazaar from which to shop for an
individual 'lifestyle' " (12). As one observer suggests, "The world has become a bazaar from
which to shop for an individual 'lifestyle' " (Faigley 12).
WORKS-CITED DOCUMENTATION Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity
and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1992.
In your text, you have three options for citing a source: quoting, paraphrasing, and
summarizing. 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)."
AUTHOR NAMED IN A SIGNAL PHRASE
If you mention the author in a signal phrase, put only the page number(s) in parentheses. Do
not write page or p.
McCullough describes John Adams as having "the hands of a man accustomed to pruning his
own trees, cutting his own hay, and splitting his own firewood" (18).
McCullough describes John Adams's hands as those of someone used to manual labor (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). Do not use punctuation between the name and the page
number(s).
Adams 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).
One biographer describes John Adams as someone who was not a stranger to manual labor
(McCullough 18).
If you cite multiple works by one author, you have four choices. You can mention the author in a
signal phrase and give the title and page reference in parentheses. Give the full title if it's brief;
otherwise, give a short version.
Kaplan insists that understanding power in the Near East requires "Western leaders who
know when to intervene, and do so without illusions" (Eastward 330).