In-Text Citation: A Guide
In text citation is something that is easy to overlook, but essential to your college level writing. Here are some of the general ways in which to use in-text citations:
Paraphrasing/Summarizing: Your reference goes before the end punctuation:
Landow's theories further popularized hypertext fiction with academics (Rettberg 65).
Quotations run in with the text: Your citation goes after the quotation but before the end punctuation:
According to Walker, "Coover's writing is a definitive example of postmodernism" (265).
Dena's theories about gaming, "detailed and important," according to Hayles will be discussed in the new anthology of works about her (56).
Quotations set off from the text: If you are quoting more than four lines of prose or three lines of poetry (remember to indent twice), also known as a "block quote," your reference goes after the punctuation:
According to him, this concern is shared by the ELO:
The Electronic Literature Organization is working to deal with this growing concern...Montfort, Wardrip-Fruin, and others offer a variety of solutions for keeping Elit readable. Their recommendations include creating work using open source programs and software, making work for multiple platforms, and supplying comments for code. (6)
Electronic sources: For electronic sources, unless they specifically have page numbers, you will include a paragraph number:
Houellebecq has been on the literary map since he wrote a “well regarded” study of H.P. Lovecraft in 1991 (Hunnewell, Par. 3).
Indirect Sources: When someone is quoted inside of an article, this is known as an indirect source. If you use a statement by one author who is quoted in the work of another author, use the abbreviation “qtd. in” in your in-text citation:
According to Sepler, “Dena’s work has helped transmedia production evolve in ways we never saw coming” (qtd. in French 16).
Maintain text form: Always maintain the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization exactly as it is in a text when you are quoting. For example, if I was quoting from the online edition of the American Weekly Mercury (http://caxton.stockton.edu/AWM/) I helped create as an undergraduate, I would leave the seemingly random capitalization where they are:
Yesterday the Commissioners of the Navy gave Notice to the Merchants in the Carolina Trade, that they were ready to contract with them, for carrying over a large Quantity of Stores to that Colony, for his Majesty's Service (AWM 1).
Do not drop quotes into your paper without any context: A direct quote needs some kind of context around it. Placing a quoted complete sentence(s) in your paper with no context around it will not make sense to your readers.
Example #1-Many US citizens disagree that this law, if it does end up going into effect, is discrimination or racism towards different races. “History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with a linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multicultural and multiethnic as America.”
While relating to the topic at hand, readers will wonder who is saying this and how it relates to your argument.
Example #2-Many US citizens disagree that this law, if it does end up going into effect, is discrimination or racism towards different races. Charles Krauthammer, a leading conservative writer, argues that, “history has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with a linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multicultural and multi ethnic as America.”
Here you have some context-you mention an author and that their view relates to your argument.
Plays: For plays, the bare minimum to cite is with a page number (119). No plays that have only acts, no scenes, you will cite the page number and act:
In Ibsen's A Doll House, one of the big issues in the play comes to a climax at the end as Nora's decides whether to leave her family (202; act 3).
If you are citing from a play that has acts and scenes, you will also include the scene as well:
The name for Huxley's most famous novel comes from Miranda's exclamation in The Tempest that "O brave new world! That has such people in it!" (1256; act 5, sc. 1)
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