Quotation and Citation Guidelines

 
Quotations of four lines or fewer of prose or three lines or fewer of verse can be included within the body of a paragraph and should not be set off.


 
Quotations of more than four lines (even four lines and one word) of prose or three lines of verse must be set off.  Skip an extra half-line, indent one full inch on the left margin.  Follow the quotation with a parenthetical citation on the next line (either on the right margin or just where the line above ends — either is acceptable, but be consistent), skip an extra half-line, and resume the paragraph without indenting.  Note:  If you have set your word processor to automatically indent after hitting the return button, you must manually remove the indent after every long quotation.  This may be done in MSWord simply by backspacing over it, or by making a change under Paragraph in the Format pull-down menu.

 
Do not put any space between the quotation marks and the text they surround:


 


While in normal writing commas and periods generally go inside quotation marks, even if they were not part of the original quote, this rule changes when the sentence includes a parenthetical notation, in which case the final period goes after the reference:

 
Other punctuation marks go outside, unless they are part of the quotation.  This does not change when citing, but the citation comes after the final punctuation mark:

 

Note:  In this case, the author is using the original statement to ask a question, but in the following case, the quoted material is already a question, not a statement.  The next sentence just begins two spaces afterwards. 


  

Note:  No punctuation goes after the parentheses.  The next sentence just begins two spaces afterwards.
 

When a quotation contains quotation marks within it, the rule is to alternate single and double quotation marks.  All quotation marks must curve in the appropriate direction, toward the quotation.   Note that this may require a little fiddling to correct on most word processing programs:


Wrong:  ““Our city and the sky correspond so perfectly,” they answered, “that any change in Andria

involves some novelty among the stars”” (Calvino 151).

Right: “‘Our city and the sky correspond so perfectly,’ they answered, ‘that any change in Andria

involves some novelty among the stars’” (Calvino 151).
 

Ellipses have spaces between the periods, and there should only be three periods.  Ellipses are usually needed only in the middle of a quotation, not at the beginning or end.  Put brackets around the ellipses to distinguish those you add from any that might be in the original text:


Wrong:  “The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones...to express feelings

which are not in actual emotions at all....Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion”

(Eliot 43).

Right:  “The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones [. . .] to express feelings

which are not in actual emotions at all. [. . .] Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion”

(Eliot 43).

 
When quoting poetry or verse drama, quotations of four lines or less may also be included within the body of the paragraph, but line breaks must be indicated with forward slashes (/), also called solidi, with a space on either side of the slash (solidus):


 
When quoting more than four lines of poetry or verse drama, the lines must be set off (again, with a 1" indentation) and the original format of the lines — including stanza breaks, indentation, capitalization, etc. — reproduced as closely as possible:
   

 
If you wish to omit lines from a long poetry quotation, use a line of ellipses approximately equal to the surrounding lines to indicate the placement of the break, no matter how many lines you are actually omitting:


I know thy forms are studied arts,

Thy subtle ways be narrow straits,

Thy courtesy but sudden starts,

And what you call’st thy gifts are baits.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

That only fools make thee a saint

And all thy good is to be sold

I know thou whole art but a shop

Of toys and trifles, traps and snares

                                                       (9-12, 15-18)

 

Parenthetical Citations

 

The reason for using parenthetical citations is to give your readers enough information so that they may easily (in conjunction with your Works Cited) find the source of the reference.  As in the examples above, quotations should be followed by a parenthetical citation, which usually includes the author’s last name and the page number on which you found the quotation.  However, parenthetical citations should be as short as possible to prevent them from unnecessarily cluttering your text.  For example, if you mention the author’s name immediately prior to the quotation, you should not put the author’s name again in the citation.  And obviously, if you are writing a paper on a specific work or author, putting her or his name in every citation is pointless; for example, if you are writing about The Great Gatsby, typing “Fitzgerald” in every citation for the novel makes no sense:


Wrong:  In contrast to Wordsworth’s famous dictum, Eliot claims, “The business of the poet is not

to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones [. . .] to express feelingswhich are not in actual emotions

at all. [. . .] Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion” (Eliot 43).

Right:  In contrast to Wordsworth’s famous dictum, Eliot claims, “The business of the poet is not

to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones [. . .] to express feelingswhich are not in actual emotions

at all. [. . .] Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion” (43).

 
If you are using two or more works by the same author, you need either to mention the title before the quotation or include a shortened form of the title in the citation:


Right:  In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot writes, “The business of the poet is not to find new

emotions, but to use ordinary ones [. . .] to express feelings which are not in actual emotionsat all.[. . .]

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion” (43).

Also Right:  Eliot writes, “The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use ordinary ones

[. . .] to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. [. . .] Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion

but an escape from emotion” (“Tradition” 43)

 
Prose works are cited by page number; however, if you are citing a book that appears in many editions, your reader is unlikely to be using the same one.  Include a book or chapter number in the citation as well.  Put the page number first, followed by a semi-colon, followed by the other information:

 
Verse plays (such as those by Shakespeare), should be cited by act, scene, and line:
 

 
Poems should generally be cited by line numbers; in the case of very long poems that are divided into sections or “books,” include that information as well, as in a verse play:


 

 

Citations in Works Cited
 
Because of recent changes to the MLA Handbook, please look up all works cited entries at The OWL at Purdue University: