When you use information, provide a quote, or make reference to a source, you need to use an in-text citation at the end of the sentence or paragraph. The in-text citation ‘points’ to the full citation listed in your ‘Works Cited‘.
In-Text Citations
An ‘in-text citation‘ goes at the end of the sentence (inside the end punctuation) and it generally includes the author’s last name and the page number.
Here’s an essay excerpt that uses a quote from The Lovely Bones and shows an ‘in-text citation’ at the end of the sentence:
Jack Salmon is the parent who turns towards his family for healing. For Jack, in order “to get the blood back in his heart, he needed his child,” and this is why Buckley helps him the most in the wake of Susie’s death (Sebold 68).
Notice that the reference is inside the end punctuation.
The name listed at the beginning of the in-text citation (in this case ‘Sebold’) is what the reader will look for on the ‘Works Cited’ page at the end of the paper.
If you reference the author’s name in the text of your essay, you only need to provide the page number in your in-text citation. See the difference:
Sebold suggests that family connections play a role in healing, and Jack needed Buckley “to get the blood back in his heart” in the wake of Susie’s death (68).
Your ‘Works Cited’:
Your ‘Works Cited’ page will have more complete information about the source, and it is located at the end of your project on a separate piece of paper. In general, your citations use a similar format.
The full citation for The Lovely Bones would look like this:
Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Little, Brown, and Company, 2002.
You can see that this follows a general format for a book:
Author Last Name, First Name. Title. Publisher, Publication Date.
More Formats
Here is the general format for a website:
Author. “Title of Web page, posting or article.” Title of Web Site, Publisher (if applicable), Publication Date, Location (URL). Date of Access.
Note: If you do not see a website author you can use the term ‘editors’ or ‘contributors’ added to the website host. Wikipedia will often use this ‘author’ because a webpage may have numerous editors. It looks like this:
Wikipedia contributors. “William Shakespeare.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 15 Sep. 2025. Web. 18 Sep. 2025.
With the 8th Edition of the MLA Style Guide, webpages include a URL to show the cited webpage:
Parrott, Zach. “Indigenous Peoples in Canada”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 28 November 2023, Historica Canada. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people. Accessed 18 September 2025.
Different resources will have different requirements for their citation, so be sure to check your format is correct.
Sources are listed in alphabetical order according to the author’s last name. Double-space your entries and indent subsequent lines for an entry. If you have trouble formatting entries this way, you can present entries the way you see here:
Works Cited
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999. Print.
Dallaire, Romeo, and Brent Beardsley. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003. Print.
Parrott, Zach. “Indigenous Peoples in Canada”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 28 November 2023, Historica Canada www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people. Accessed 18 September 2025.
Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 2002. Print.
Viner, Katharine. “Above and Beyond.” The Guardian. 24 Aug. 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/aug/24/fiction.features. 21 May 2015.
More on ‘Works Cited’:
- At the end of your essay, you need to provide a list of the resources you used (your ‘citations’) under the heading ‘Works Cited’.
- Different resources will have different requirements for their citation, so be sure to check your format is correct.
- As you create your ‘Works Cited’ list, remember to list your sources alphabetically and leave a space between each.
- The list of Works Cited must be on a new page at the end of your essay or paper.
- Entries are arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name or by the title if there is no author
- Watch your formatting:
- Titles of major works (e.g. novels, websites, newspapers, films) are italicized.
- Titles of ‘smaller’ works (e.g. short stories, webpages, articles, songs) are put in “quotations”.
Looking for More Information?
You can refer to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers in the library, or there are some useful guides online.
UBC has an excellent guide that provides examples of citations for a wide range of sources. It also provides useful examples for parenthetical references and different approaches to in-text citations:
