How Do I... 

Citing Sources in the Text (MLA Parenthetical Style)
For detailed information see Chapter 6 in the MLA Handbook.

    

    General guidelines 

• References in the text must clearly point to specific sources in the list of Works Cited

• Identify the location of the cited information as specifically as possible.
                      Print Source
                      Provide page or page numbers
  
                      Classic prose work or the Bible
                      Provide chapter, book, stanza, or the numbers of an act, scene and line                           

                              Website with no page numbers
                   

• Citing Part of a Work
          If you quote, paraphrase, or use a specific passage in a book or an article give the relevant page number.

• One author
                   Provide only the last name.
                  (Patterson 183-85)

• Two or three authors
                  Provide the last name of each person listed
                  (Rabkin, Greenberg, and Olander vii)
  
  Paraphrase example:
  In Hansberry's play Raisin in the Sun, the rejection of Lindner's tempting offer permits Walter's family to pursue the new life they had long dreamed about (274-75).    

          Direct Quotation example:
          Among intentional spoonerisms, the "unlike metathesis of distinctive features may serve to weld                    
          together words etymologically unrelated but close in their sound and meaning" (Jakobsen and Waugh 304).

 

The University of Wisconsin Writing Center provides extensive online examples of how to cite sources in the text 

MLA site answers
"When I borrow repeatedly from the same source, how should my parenthetical citations appear"?
 

Additional MLA resources

Frequently Asked Questions (MLA sponsored site)
The Writing Center - University of Wisconsin - Madison
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL)