Skip to Main Content

Exclusion: Cause and Effect Research Project: LaRochelle: Parenthetical Citations

In-Text (Parenthetical) Citations

Using Parenthetical Citations

PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS

The purpose of PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS is to give credit to others whose information you are using and to tell your readers where to find that information for further study. You must acknowledge the source of all quotations and of paraphrases and summaries when the paraphrases and summaries are more than general knowledge, such as a theory, an opinion, a statistic, etc. The reader must be able to locate material in your WORKS CITED page every time you quote, paraphrase or otherwise refer to material from a source. To avoid interrupting the flow of your writing, place the PARENTHETICAL CITATION where a pause would naturally occur (preferably at the end of a sentence), as near as possible to the material documented. The parenthetical reference precedes the punctuation mark that concludes the sentence, clause or phrase containing the borrowed material. The PARENTHETICAL CITATION should be kept brief and accurate as follows:

  1. In general, a citation should include the author's last name and page reference:

Catherine recognized that "with most of its population imprisoned in serfdom and the remainder living provincial lives revolving about agriculture, and having little or no education, Russia had no middle class" (McGill 464).

  1. If the author is mentioned in the text of the paper (which aids the flow of the paper and should be used often), the citation should only include the page reference:

Witherington writes, "Finny's flaw steadily becomes worse with each new awareness of the hate around him" (253).

  1. If the WORKS CITED contains more than one work by the same author, give the title (or a shortened version) after the author's name followed by the page reference:

The author spent all his time inside with his mother. In other words, he became the classic example of a mother's boy (O'Connor An Only Child 20).

  1. If the work has up to three authors listed in the WORKS CITED, cite all the last names and the page reference. If the work lists four or more authors, cite the last name of the first author followed by et al. and the page reference:

Growing interest in African American writing in the late 60s led to "a significant reassessment of the aesthetic and humanistic achievements of black writers" (Inge, Duke, and Bryer 1).

Likewise, police officers looking for stolen cars quickly examine suspicious vehicles to see if the license plate is clean and the car dirty (or vice versa) as a shortcut since thieves frequently switch plates (Webb et al. 122-23).

  1. If the work is listed only by the title in the WORKS CITED, cite the title or a shortened version of it and the page reference:

The rapid increase of opium purchasing reversed the favorable balance of trade and led to the export of silver, thus greatly upsetting China's economy and monetary system (Exploring World Cultures 276). OR (Exploring 276).

  1. If you discover several sources that agree on a point or opinion, you should list all of them in the citation and separate them with a semicolon:

Over time, the children of debt serfs became legal serfs with no hope of freedom (Hibbert 97; McGill 465; Grey 198).

  1. If you find that one of your sources has a quote from another source, you may want to use that quotation. If you cannot locate the original source, put the abbreviation qtd. in ("quoted in") before the indirect source you cite in your parenthetical reference:

According to Ellis, Phineas' peers at the Devon School, as well as the readers of the novel, recognize that he is "incapable of malice" (qtd. in Contemporary Literary Criticism 248).

  1. If your source has more than one volume, you must designate the volume number and the page number separated by a colon in the citation:

Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of Christian Science (World Book 6:73).

  1. When citing a legal statute (a law), list the abbreviation for the statutory title followed by the section and subsection numbers, if any, immediately following the quote or paraphrase:

New York State Domestic Relations Law permits abandonment for a period of more than a year as a ground for divorce. DRL 170 (2)

  1. When citing a case, list the date in parenthesis followed by the volume number, the abbreviated name of the reporter and the page number immediately after the underlined case name:

The Supreme Court of the United States set forth guidelines for abortion in the landmark Roe v Wade (1973) 410 US 113.