dialogue quote essay mla

LibAnswers: MLA FAQs

How do i format quotation marks when i am quoting a work that has quotes in it (such as dialogue).

The 9th edition MLA Handbook  says that if you are quoting dialogue from a work:

Enclose what you are quoting from the source in double quotation marks, and enclose the dialogue (or quoted material) in single quotation marks.

If the entirety of what you are quoting from your source is a quotation or dialogue in the source itself, you can use just double quotation marks, as long as it's clear that what you are quoting from the source is a quote itself(265)

Schiffer reflected on evening mealtimes with her mother in her childhood: "Mother shook her head. 'Dinner time in the big house. You can set your watch by Walter's stomach'"(13).

If you are quoting just dialogue, you only need to use double quotation marks.

Schiffer recalled her mother's words when it came to mealtimes in her childhood: "Dinner time in the big house. You can set your watch by Walter's stomach"(13).

For more information:

https://style.mla.org/citing-dialogue-from-a-novel/

Works Cited

MLA Handbook . 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021. 

Schiffer, Vivienne.  Camp Nine : A Novel , University of Arkansas Press, 2011.  ProQuest Ebook Central , https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/linfield/detail.action?docID=2007570.

• MLA Quotations
• Last Updated Mar 28, 2023
• Answered By Linfield Librarian

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How to Quote and Cite a Play in an Essay Using MLA Format

Last Updated: October 12, 2023

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. This article has been viewed 392,098 times.

MLA (Modern Language Association) format is a popular citation style for papers and essays. You may be unsure how to quote and cite play using MLA format in your essay for a class. Start by following the correct formatting for a quote from one speaker or from multiple speakers in the play. Then, use the correct citation style for a prose play or a verse play.

Template and Examples

Quoting Dialogue from One Speaker

• For example, if you were quoting a character from the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, you would write, In Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , the character Honey says...

• For example, if you are quoting the character George from the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, you would write, “George says,…” or “George states,…”.

• For example, if you are quoting from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , you would write: Martha notes, "Truth or illusion, George; you don’t know the difference."

• For example, if you were quoting from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure , you would write: Claudio states “the miserable have no other medicine / But only hope.”

Quoting Dialogue from Multiple Speakers

• You do not need to use quotation marks when you are quoting dialogue by multiple speakers from a play. The blank space will act as a marker, rather than quotation marks.

• MARTHA. Truth or illusion, George; you don’t know the difference.
• GEORGE. No, but we must carry on as though we did.
• MARTHA. Amen.

• Verse dialogue is indented 1 ¼ inch (3.17cm) from the left margin.

• RUTH. Eat your eggs, Walter.
• WALTER. (Slams the table and jumps up) --DAMN MY EGGS--DAMN ALL THE EGGS THAT EVER WAS!
• RUTH. Then go to work.
• WALTER. (Looking up at her) See--I’m trying to talk to you ‘bout myself--(Shaking his head with the repetition)--and all you can say is eat them eggs and go to work.

Citing a Quote from a Prose Play

• If you are quoting dialogue from one speaker, place the citation at the end of the quoted dialogue, in the text.
• If you are quoting dialogue from multiple speakers, place the citation at the end of the block quote.

• For example, you may write: “(Albee…)” or “(Hansberry…)”

• For example, you may write, “(Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ...).”
• If you have mentioned the title of the play once already in an earlier citation in your essay, you do not need to mention it again in the citations for the play moving forward.

• For example, you may write, “(Albee 10; act 1).
• If you are including the title of the play, you may write: “(Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 10; act 1).”

Citing a Quote from a Verse Play

• For example, if the quote appears in act 4, scene 4 of the play, you will write, “(4.4…)”.

• For example, if the quote appears on lines 33 to 35, you will write, “(33-35).”
• The completed citation would look like: “(4.4.33-35)”.

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About This Article

To quote and cite a play in your essay using MLA format, start by referencing the author and title of the play in the main body of your essay. Then, name the speaker of the quote so it’s clear who’s talking. For example, write, “In Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the character Honey says…” After introducing the quote, frame the dialogue with quotation marks to make it clear that it’s a direct quote from a text. If your dialogue is written in verse, use forward slashes to indicate each line break. For more tips from our English co-author, including how to quote dialogue between multiple speakers in your essay, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How do I quote dialogue that is not in quotation marks?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook . For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook .

Some works render dialogue without enclosing it in punctuation that would distinguish it from the surrounding text. Treat such dialogue as you would treat any quoted material: use quotation marks to distinguish the quoted material from your prose, but retain the published formatting within the quotation—for example:

Saramago’s personification of death signs her name in lowercase letters, a detail that does not escape the prime minister and the cabinet secretary amid more momentous considerations: “The prime minister picked up the letter again, glanced over it without reading it and said, It’s odd, the initial letter of the signature should be a capital but it’s not, Yes, I found that odd too, starting a name with a lowercase letter isn’t normal . . .”  (103). Work Cited Saramago, José. Death with Interruptions . Translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Harcourt, 2008.

If you believe it will be helpful to the reader or pertinent to your argument, you can make clear in your prose or in a note that the author of the work you are quoting does not use quotation marks for dialogue. The choice to avoid quotation marks, however, does not in itself require comment, particularly if the author uses the familiar technique of distinguishing one speaker from another using line breaks or dashes. When more than one line is being quoted, it’s clearest to set such material as an extract; for example:

Grace’s commentary measures the doctor against the would-be confessors of her past. Perhaps I will tell you lies, I say. He doesn’t say, Grace what a wicked suggestion, you have a sinful imagination. He says, Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will tell lies without meaning to, and perhaps you will also tell them deliberately. Perhaps you are a liar. I look at him. There are those who have said I am one, I say. We will just have to take that chance, he says. (Atwood 41)

Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace . Anchor, 1997.

Selections can be worked into the text as you would run in any quoted material, without special formatting:

Grace’s commentary measures the doctor against the would-be confessors of her past. She proposes, “Perhaps I will tell you lies,” then notes, “He doesn’t say, Grace what a wicked suggestion, you have a sinful imagination. He says, Perhaps you will” (Atwood 41).

The following example shows original text with dashes followed by a published translation that omits them. MLA publications include English translations for text quoted in other languages, which may involve juxtaposing styles as shown here.

After they have become friends, the fox and the little prince must prepare to part: — Ah! dit le renard…Je pleurerai. — C’est ta faute, dit le petit prince, je ne te souhaitais point de mal, mais tu as voulu que je t’apprivoise… — Bien sûr, dit le renard. — Mais tu vas pleurer! dit le petit prince. — Bien sûr, dit le renard. — Alors tu n’y gagnes rien! — J’y gagne, dit le renard, à cause de la couleur du blé. (Saint-Exupéry 63) “Ah!” the fox said. “I shall weep.” “It’s your own fault,” the little prince said. “I never wanted to to do you any harm, but you insisted that I tame you . . .” “Yes, of course,” the fox said. “But you’re going to weep!” said the little prince. “Yes, of course,” the fox said. “Then you get nothing out of it?” “I get something” the fox said, “because of the color of the wheat.” (Howard 61) Works Cited Howard, Richard, translator. The Little Prince . By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Harcourt, 2000. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. Le petit prince . Harcourt, 1943.

For more tips on quoting dialogue, see “How do I punctuate quoted dialogue from a novel?”

Home / Guides / Citation Guides / MLA Format / Using short quotes and block quotes in MLA

Using short quotes and block quotes in MLA

Quotations (also known as quotes) are the exact words that are taken directly from a text and repeated by someone other than the original author. When you use the exact words and sentence structure as your source, you are quoting that source. When using quotes in your writing, you need to copy the words exactly as they appear in the source.

Quotes should be used sparingly because the majority of the text should be your own ideas. Keep quotations short and to the point to keep your readers interested. Quotes are most effective when the exact words of the source are particularly well suited for your purposes and back up your own ideas.

Short quotes vs. block quotes

There are several ways to incorporate quotations into your text. You can include short quotes of four lines or less, which are incorporated into your text and are set off from the text with quotation marks.

If the section you wish to quote is longer than four lines, you can use a block quote . Block quotes are set off from the text in a separate paragraph that has larger indents at the left margin.

The MLA Handbook says this about quotes:

Construct a clear, grammatically correct sentence that allows you to introduce or incorporate a quotation accurately. When you quote, reproduce the source text exactly. Do not make changes in the spelling, capitalization, interior punctuation, italicization, or accents that appear in the source. Generally place citations at the end of your sentence or quotation. (253)

The quote above from the MLA Handbook is formatted in block quote style.

When using quotes in your papers, you must include the author’s last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation is taken as an in-text citation, unless you have named the author is the sentence preceding the quote. A full reference should appear in your Works Cited page.

Using short quotes in MLA

When you want to cite a section of your source that is four lines or less, you set off the quote in the text with double quotation marks directly before and after the quoted material. End punctuation goes before the final quotation mark.

Quotations can be integrated into a text in several ways.

1. Use the quote as a sentence

She recalled the moment of her husband’s passing. “John was talking, then he wasn’t” (Didion 10).

2. Directly integrate the quote into the sentence

Didion writes that for many months, “there has been occasions on which I was incapable of thinking rationally” and that she was “thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome” (35).

3. Place the quotation in the middle of the sentence

Joan Didion says that after returning to her apartment after her husband’s death, she felt that, “there must be certain things I needed to do,” when she got home from the hospital (28).

Guidelines that apply to all short quote formats:

• All punctuation should be the same in the quote as in the source text.
• The MLA in-text citation should always appear in parentheses at the end of your sentence, regardless of the location of the quote within the sentence.
• If the source does not use page numbers, do not include a number in the parenthetical citation.
• If the source does not have an author’s name, you should use the title of the work or the first item listed in the full reference in the parenthetical citation instead.
• Punctuation such as periods, commas, and semicolons are placed after the parenthetical citation.

Quoting poetry

When quoting up to three short lines of poetry, indicate breaks in verse by placing a forward slash at the end of each verse line. A space should precede and follow the slash. If there is a stanza break within the quotation, indicate this with a double slash ( // ).

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” (Oliver 94).

“What is my name? // What is the name of the deep breath I would take / over and over” (Oliver 125).

Block quotes

If you want to quote a section of text that is longer than four lines or a section of poetry that is longer than three lines, use a block quote. Block quotes are also used when quoting lines from a play.

You introduce the block quote with a sentence in your own words. You want to let your reader know who the quote is from and why you are including it.

Joan Didion ends her first chapter by laying out her goal for writing the book:

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. (7)

How to format a block quote

• Lead into the quote with a summary sentence that lets the reader know why you are including the quote.
• End the sentence before quote with a colon (unless the grammatical connection between the sentence leading into the quote requires some other punctuation or none at all).
• Start a new line.
• Indent the quote ½ inch or five spaces from the left margin for the entire quote (not just the first line).
• Do not use quotation marks.
• Double space the quote.
• Put the parenthetical citation after the final punctuation mark in the quote.
• Comment on the quote after using it. Do not end a paragraph with a block quote. You should always have text after it.

Adding or omitting words in quotations

• If you add words to a quotation, enclose them in brackets like [this].
• If you omit words in a quotation, use an ellipsis, which is three periods separated by spaces ( . . . ) to show where the words were removed.

You may want to add or omit words in quotations to make them clearer, shorten them, or help them to fit grammatically into your sentence.

Additional block quote formatting for prose

• If you are directly quoting one paragraph or part of one, do not indent the first line of the block quote more than the rest of the quote.
• If you are quoting two or more paragraphs and the first sentence of the quote is also the first sentence of a paragraph in the source, indent the first line of each paragraph an additional ½ inch or five spaces.
• If the first sentence of a multi-paragraph quote is not the first sentence of a paragraph in the source, indent only the first line of the second paragraph ½ inch or five spaces.

Formatting block quotes for poetry

Format it as you would prose unless the poem has unusual spacing or formatting.

• Indent ½ inch or five spaces from the left margin.
• Do not add any quotation marks unless they appear in the source.
• If the line of poetry does not fit on one line in the paper, continue it on the next line, but indent that line an additional ½ inch or five spaces (like a hanging indent).
• When citing longer sections of poetry, keep the formatting as close to the original as possible.

In her poem, Rain, Mary Oliver describes the sensation of rain on a tree:

All afternoon it rained, then

such power came down from the clouds

on a yellow thread,

as authoritative as God is supposed to be.

When it hit the tree, her body

Opened forever. (3)

Formatting block quotes for drama/plays

Formatting quotes from plays has slightly different rules than prose and poetry.

To format dialogue from plays:

• Begin with the name of the character speaking printed in all capital letters followed by a period.
• Start the quotation. If the line a character is saying needs more than one line, indent the subsequent lines a ½ inch or five spaces.
• Some lines of dialogue start with extra spaces between the character name and the first line of dialogue. Print the dialogue exactly as it appears in the play, including the extra spaces.
• When the dialogue shifts to a new character, follow the pattern above.
• For the in-text citation, cite the act, scene, and line of the quote instead of the page number.

ROMEO.                                     By a name

I know not how to tell thee who I am.

My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,

Because it is an enemy to thee.

Had I it written, I would tear the word.

JULIET. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words

Of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound.

Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?

ROMEO. Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike. (Shakespeare 2.2.54-61)

• Works Cited

Didion, Joan. A Year of Magical Thinking . Vintage International, 2006.

MLA Handbook.  9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021.

Oliver, Mary. New and Selected Poems. Vol. 1, Beacon Press, 2004.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet . Arden Shakespeare , edited by René Weis, Bloomsbury, 2012, 118–338. Drama Online , https://doi.org/10.5040/9781408160152.00000039.

Published October 27, 2020. Updated July 18, 2021.

By Catherine Sigler. Catherine has a Ph.D. in English Education and has taught college-level writing for 15 years.

MLA Formatting Guide

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• A complete guide to MLA in-text citations

MLA In-text Citations | A Complete Guide (9th Edition)

Published on July 9, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on March 5, 2024.

An MLA in-text citation provides the author’s last name and a page number in parentheses.

If a source has two authors, name both. If a source has more than two authors, name only the first author, followed by “ et al. ”

If the part you’re citing spans multiple pages, include the full page range. If you want to cite multiple non-consecutive pages at the same time, separate the page numbers with commas.

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Table of contents

Where to include an mla in-text citation, citing sources with no author, citing sources with no page numbers, citing different sources with the same author name, citing sources indirectly, frequently asked questions about mla in-text citations.

Place the parenthetical citation directly after the relevant quote or paraphrase , and before the period or other punctuation mark (except with  block quotes , where the citation comes after the period).

If you have already named the author in the sentence, add only the page number in parentheses. When mentioning a source with three or more authors outside of parentheses, use “and others” or “and colleagues” in place of “et al.”

• MLA is the second most popular citation style (Smith and Morrison 17–19) .
• According to Smith and Morrison , MLA is the second most popular citation style (17–19) .
• APA is by far “the most used citation style in the US” (Moore et al. 74) , but it is less dominant in the UK (Smith 16) .
• Moore and colleagues state that APA is more popular in the US than elsewhere (74) .

Combining citations

If a sentence is supported by more than one source, you can combine the citations in a single set of parentheses. Separate the two sources with a semicolon .

Livestock farming is one of the biggest global contributors to climate change (Garcia 64; Davies 14) .

Consecutive citations of the same source

If you cite the same source repeatedly within a paragraph, you can include the full citation the first time you cite it, then just the page number for subsequent citations.

MLA is the second most popular citation style (Smith and Morrison 17–19) . It is more popular than Chicago style, but less popular than APA (21) .

You can do this as long as it remains clear what source you’re citing. If you cite something else in between or start a new paragraph, reintroduce the full citation again to avoid ambiguity.

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For sources with no named author , the in-text citation must match the first element of the Works Cited entry. This may be the name of an organization, or the title of the source.

If the source title or organization name is longer than four words, shorten it to the first word or phrase in the in-text citation, excluding any articles ( a, an, and the ). The shortened title or organization name should begin with the word the source is alphabetized by in the Works Cited.

Follow the general MLA rules for formatting titles : If the source is a self-contained work (e.g. a whole website or an entire book ), put the title in italics; if the source is contained within a larger whole (e.g. a page on a website or a chapter of a book), put the title in quotation marks.

If a source does not have page numbers but is divided into numbered parts (e.g. chapters, sections, scenes, Bible books and verses, Articles of the Constitution , or timestamps), use these numbers to locate the relevant passage.

If the source does not use any numbering system, include only the author’s name in the in-text citation. Don’t include paragraph numbers unless they are explicitly numbered in the source.

Note that if there are no numbered divisions and you have already named the author in your sentence, then no parenthetical citation is necessary.

If your Works Cited page includes more than one entry under the same last name, you need to distinguish between these sources in your in-text citations.

Multiple sources by the same author

If you cite more than one work by the same author, add a shortened title to signal which source you are referring to.

In this example, the first source is a whole book, so the title appears in italics; the second is an article published in a journal, so the title appears in quotation marks.

Different authors with the same last name

To distinguish between different authors with the same last name, use the authors’ initials (or, if the initials are the same, full first names) in your in-text citations:

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Sometimes you might want to cite something that you found quoted in a secondary source . If possible, always seek out the original source and cite it directly.

If you can’t access the original source, make sure to name both the original author and the author of the source that you accessed . Use the abbreviation “qtd. in” (short for “quoted in”) to indicate where you found the quotation.

In these cases, only the source you accessed directly is included in the Works Cited list.

You must include an MLA in-text citation every time you quote or paraphrase from a source (e.g. a book , movie , website , or article ).

Some source types, such as books and journal articles , may contain footnotes (or endnotes) with additional information. The following rules apply when citing information from a note in an MLA in-text citation :

• To cite information from a single numbered note, write “n” after the page number, and then write the note number, e.g. (Smith 105n2)
• To cite information from multiple numbered notes, write “nn” and include a range, e.g. (Smith 77nn1–2)
• To cite information from an unnumbered note, write “un” after the page number, with a space in between, e.g. (Jones 250 un)

If a source has two authors, name both authors in your MLA in-text citation and Works Cited entry. If there are three or more authors, name only the first author, followed by et al.

If a source has no author, start the MLA Works Cited entry with the source title . Use a shortened version of the title in your MLA in-text citation .

If a source has no page numbers, you can use an alternative locator (e.g. a chapter number, or a timestamp for a video or audio source) to identify the relevant passage in your in-text citation. If the source has no numbered divisions, cite only the author’s name (or the title).

If you already named the author or title in your sentence, and there is no locator available, you don’t need a parenthetical citation:

• Rajaram  argues that representations of migration are shaped by “cultural, political, and ideological interests.”
• The homepage of The Correspondent describes it as “a movement for radically different news.”

Yes. MLA style uses title case, which means that all principal words (nouns, pronouns , verbs, adjectives , adverbs , and some conjunctions ) are capitalized.

This applies to titles of sources as well as the title of, and subheadings in, your paper. Use MLA capitalization style even when the original source title uses different capitalization .

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How to Quote and Cite a Play in an Essay Using MLA Format

MLA style provides guidelines for citing both small and large passages of plays in the body of your text. In addition, MLA requires you to note any plays you reference on a separate works cited list. How you include quotes from a play in your text will depend on how whether you're quoting a single character or dialogue between multiple characters.

Quoting a Play in Your Essay

Whenever you quote a play in your essay, MLA style requires you to include an in-text citation showing where the quote came from. For a play, this will include the abbreviated title of the play, and the section of the play in which the quote is found.

If you are quoting a single character's dialogue, or stage directions, in your paper, you can simply include the quote within quotation marks as part of your sentence.

If quoting a verse play, lines are separated by a slash /. Take the following from Shakepeare's "Measure for Measure":

In asking for his pardon, Claudio states "the miserable have no other medicine/But only hope" ( Measure , 3.1.2-3).

In the in-text citation, " Measure " show's the play's title, "3" is the act number, "1" the scene number, and "2-3" the lines on which the quote appears. Note that each item in the play's division is separated by periods. '},{'content':'If you're quoting a play that does not have scenes or lines, include the act, and note it as such, so it is not confused with a page number.

For example, Caryl Churchill's "Cloud 9" has no scenes, so you might cite it as follows:

Betty's anxiety is shown by her worry toward Tommy. "He's going to fall in. Make Martin make him move back" ( Cloud , act 2).

Quoting Dialogue From Multiple Characters

One of the features of plays is that multiple characters speak to each other in dramatic form. If you quote two characters speaking to each other this way in your paper, it is formatted as a block quote. Include a blank line between the body of your paper and the first line of your quote.

When dialogue switches characters, include a blank line between each character's lines. Each line in the block quote must be indented 1 inch from your the rest of your paper's text, and if a character's speech runs more than one line, each additional line is indented an additional 1/4-inch. The names of characters are written in full caps -- don't forget to include an in-text citation after the quote.

This quote is from Aristophanes's "The Birds":

PISTHETAIROS: I never saw so many birds! They make me nervous.

EUELPIDES: You said it. When they lift their wings you can't see where you're going. ("Birds", párodos)

Greek plays are divided into named subsections, such as episodes and strophes -- the name of each subsection should be included when citing a Greek play. In this case "párodos" is the choral section including the quote.

Including a Play on Your Works Cited List

In MLA style, an additional page is added after the last page of your paper to include all items that were cited in your essay.

When you quote or reference a play in your writing, you place a reference on this page to give the information of the book or anthology in which you found the play. Your reference will include the name of the author, the play title, the publication information, and the format in which it was found. MLA arranges this information in the following order:

Author Lastname, Firstname. Title of Play . Publication Location: Publisher, Year of Publication. Format.

For example:

Churchill, Caryl. Cloud 9 . New York: Theater Communications Group, 1985. Print.

If you are referencing a play that has been translated and/or edited, include the translator's and/or editor's name after the title of the play:

Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of an Author . Trans. Edward Storer. Ed. Adam Frost. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1998. Print.

Plays in Anthologies

Plays will often be included in a multivolume work or anthology. If you are citing a specific play that is included in an anthology, the anthology name should be included in italics after the play title.

In addition, the pages the play appears on within the anthology should be included after the year of publication. Here's an example of an anthology citation:

Aristophanes. The Frogs . Four Comedies . Trans. and Ed. Dudley Fitts. New York: Harcourt, 1962. 69-156. Print.

Note that if the translator and editor are the same person, you list "Trans." first.

Plays Found Online

To include a play found online your reference list, you will replace the publisher information with the name and date of the Web page on which you found the play. Also note the source format as "Web." You do not need a URL to cite a Web source in MLA, but you need to indicate the date you last accessed the Web page. Format your citation as follows:

Author Lastname, Firstname. Title of Play . Name of Web page . Name of website, last date Web page was updated. Web. Date you accessed Web page.

Here is an example:

Shakespeare, William. Measure for Measure . The Complete Works of William Shakespeare . Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 16 March 2015.

Note that "n.d." means "no date." You can use this in place of the update date for a webpage, or publication date for a book, if no date is available.

Need help with a citation? Try our citation generator .

• Pellissippi State Community College Library: MLA Style Guide - Drama
• Purdue University Online Writing Lab: MLA Works Cited -- Electronic Sources

Jon Zamboni began writing professionally in 2010. He has previously written for The Spiritual Herald, an urban health care and religious issues newspaper based in New York City, and online music magazine eBurban. Zamboni has a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies from Wesleyan University.

A Writer's Handbook

• Introduction
• Purpose & Audience
• Opening Sentences
• Linking Sentences
• Finished Introduction
• Topic Sentences
• Development
• Conclusion Sentences
• Conclusion Paragraphs for Essays
• Essay Writing Organization: The Outline
• Annotating Readings
• General Writing Idea Development
• Rhetorical and Visual Analysis Idea Development
• Character Analysis Idea Development
• Theme Analysis Idea Development
• Theory Analysis
• Using the Library
• Using Sources for Illustration or Support
• Using Research for Essays
• Writing About Research

In-text and Works Cited

Citation examples.

• Final Thoughts on Essays
• Literary Element Index
• Appendix of Example Papers

For a tutorial on MLA style from the Purdue OWL, click here:

• MLA page numbering:  This is set in the header of the paper on the top right hand side of the paper and should have your last name and the page number.
• MLA heading:  This should only be on the first page of your paper (not in the header of the page) and should contain four lines with the following information in this exact order:  Line 1 - Your full name, Line 2 – Instructor name, Line 3 – Class name and number (ENG 101), Line 4 – Date.
• Title of the Essay:  This should be centered on the page after the heading.  The title of an essay should give the reader a clue as to what the essay is focusing on.
• Double spacing:  Choose the double space option in the paragraph section when you right click in the document.
• Font and size:  Times New Roman or Arial font set at 12 point.
• Works Cited page:  This will be the last page of a paper that uses any kind of source.  Center the words “Work(s) Cited” at the top of the page.  Entries will be listed alphabetically by the first letter of the entry.  Sources used in the paper must be placed on the Works Cited page.

Online guide for the following information found by clicking: 9th Edition (2021) Updates

The new MLA documentation and citation style centers around elements within “containers.”  Each container has core elements so students can easily put any type of citation together.  Also, these new core elements are now only separated by commas, so no elaborate punctuation is needed; students only need remember that at the end of a container, there is a period; all other information is separated by commas.

Additional containers would continue the entry if embedded in a database with additional container information.

Paraphrases Versus Quotations

Paraphrasing material from a source is when a writer uses the main idea of selections from that source.  Generally, a few sentences or a small paragraph is the most a writer can effectively paraphrase in his or her own words.  Much more information than this gets into summary and this is usually not recommended.

-from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house:  the fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled us with alarms.  the neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlour floor, and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand, and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror” (Stevenson 15).

Paraphrase:

Jim and his mother were both terrified to the point of wanting to leave because of the odd noises in the eerily quiet inn and the dead man laying before them (Stevenson 15).

Paraphrasing material in multiple sentences from a source does not require a citation after every sentence; however, you must set the chunk of sentences up to allow the reader to recognize that multiple sentences are paraphrased.  Begin a multi-sentence paraphrase by mentioning the source; continue the paraphrase until you are done with the material and cite the chunk of sentences at the end.

“Indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house:  the fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled us with alarms.  The neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlour floor, and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand, and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror” (Stevenson 15).

Multi-sentence paraphrase:

Stevenson sets an atmosphere of eeriness for Jim and his mother by showing readers how much the two did not want to stay in their house.  There were sounds, even small ones from a clock, that were scaring them.  There were also people, like the dead captain and the vagrant outside the door, that were making them feel uneasy in their house alone (Stevenson 15).

Quoting material from a source is taking the direct wording, style, and formatting from a source – using ellipsis or brackets if the writer takes away (ellipsis), changes (brackets), or adds (brackets) anything of his or her own.  The length of the quotation is up to the paper writer and will need to be in block format if the prose quote is longer than four paper lines or if the poetry quote is longer than 3 consecutive lines or if a drama quote includes back and forth dialogue.

Stevenson writes that Jim and his mother hear “the fall of the coals…[and] the very ticking of the clock” which makes them want to leave (15).

Discussion of Summary

Summarizing material from a source is when a writer takes a large portion of the information and condenses it into one main idea.  This could be as simple as saying a summary of The Hunger Games movie is about a girl named Katniss that volunteers to go through a deadly annual game in place of her sister, and through her trials and determination, she successfully navigates the game and challenge the political system in place at the same time. 

*Often times a summary will be more than one sentence, but note how the whole movie (and almost whole series of movies) is condensed into a very short amount of space, but still illustrates the main point.

Ellipsis and Bracket Use

• Ellipsis (…) allows a writer to delete information within a sentence that may not be pertinent to the illustration or support at hand. Ellipses will alert the reader that some information from the source was left out.
• Brackets ( [  ]  ) allow a writer to change grammatical tense/error or add clarification to words or ideas in a sentence to the illustration or support from the source.  Brackets will alert the reader that those words are altered in some way from the original quotation.

Prose Citation:  What Comes After the Quote and Paraphrase Examples

• Signal Phrase: Critic Mark Towers argues, “The yellow in the brick road symbolizes the gold standard of the times” (54). *Note, if the source did not have a page number, the citation of the author’s name in signal would do it.
• No Signal Phrase:  In the political climate of the time, the debate between gold and silver split the classes (Towers 54). *Note, if the source did not have a page number, the citation would only list the author’s name.
• No author:  The CDC advocates, “women should have a yearly mammogram after age 40” (“Breast Cancer”). *Note, what is in the parentheses is what will be in the first part of the Works Cited entry (not author).
• Quotation from a different source within a work:  Becker and Murphy denote that “…consumption capital…was first used to explain excessive and addicted gambling behavior from and economic perspective” (qtd. in Fiedler 292).
• Long quotation with omitted information: Critic Alex Harmon notes, “Once the metaphorical sheet has been pulled over their eyes…the parents are blind to their daughter’s evil.” *Note, the lack of parentheses at the end just means this is from a source with no pagination (author mentioned in signal phrase).
• Quote with information added for clarification from the paper writer:  The ogre marched on as “he carried [the princess] to the dungeon” (Smith 205). *Note, the original wording was “her.”
• Long quotation (block quotation form): a quotation that is over four lines will have a complete sentence set-up, an indent of two tab spaces, no quotation marks, and the period will come before the parenthetical citation:

Poetry Citation Examples

The rules for poetry differ from the rules for quoting prose in two key ways:

• Poetry requires writers to cite line numbers not page numbers
• Poetry requires writers to keep line breaks intact

Quoting 1, 2 or 3 lines of poetry. You can quote three or fewer lines of poetry without having to place the lines in a block quote. Use quotation marks. Use a slash to indicate the break between lines. Put the line numbers in parentheses. Place the period at the end of the line number(s):

Example:  One poet ponders, “Have I a voice in making a choice/Or is it some force/Determines my course?” (Perrine 1-3).

Quoting 4 or more lines of poetry. If you quote four or more lines of poetry, you need to block indent the poem ten spaces on the left margin (two tabs).

Example:  Bob Dylan makes a call to politicians in his song “The Times They Are A-Changin’:

          Come senators, congressmen

          Please heed the call

          Don’t stand in the doorway

          Don’t block up the hall (23-26)

When citing several single words from different lines, put line numbers after each single word. If you quote several words or phrases from throughout a poem, list the line numbers after each word.

Example:  Lucille Clifton uses imagery such as “big” (1) and “mighty” (11) to describe her wonderful hips.

When quoting one word or phrase, put the line number at the end of the sentence. Just as when quoting a single word of a prose work, put line numbers at the end of a sentence if quoting only one word.

Example: McKay describes America as a “cultured hell” to show the country’s good and bad side (4).

Drama Citation Examples

• Drama can be written in prose or verse form

When quoting from plays written in verse form, follow the rules for quoting poetry. In addition, if the play is divided into acts and/or scenes, convey this information in parentheses (act #, then scene #, followed by line #).

Example:  Fewer than four lines from an essay on Oedipus the King:

 Knowing he is blind, Oedipus is full of woe and laments, “Death take the man who unbound/My feet on that hillside/And delivered me from death to life! What life!” (Sophocles, Exodos, lines 1301-1303).

Example:  Four plus lines blocked from an essay on Hamlet:

Shakespeare illustrates a debate between the righteousness of life over death or death over life when Hamlet is speaking only to himself:

          To be, or not to be, that is the question:

          Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

          The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

          Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

          And by opposing end them. (III.i.56-60)

When quoting from plays written in prose, follow the rules for quoting prose. Do NOT use slash marks to indicate line division in the original, and use act, scene, and page number in parenthesis (act #, scene #, page #).

Example: From an essay on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House :

Nora finally realizes she has been nothing but a doll in Torvald’s house when she confronts him saying, “Torvald – in that instant it dawned on me that for eight years I’ve been living here with a stranger, and that I’d even conceived three children – oh, I can’t stand the thought of it! I could tear myself to bits” (Ibsen, III.251)

     **Block format for plays written in prose will be used when the words from a character exceed four lines in your typed essay.

If you are quoting back and forth dialogue, always set the quote off in block format, even if it takes just two lines. Put each character’s name in capital letters, followed by a period. All additional lines spoken by the same character should be indented by an extra quarter inch (approximately three spaces).

Example:  From an essay on Sophocles’ Oedipus the King:

After Teiresias prophecies Oedipus’ horrible fate, the two bicker:

          OEDIPUS. Am I to bear this from him? –

              Damnation/Take you! Out of this place! Out

              of my sight!

          TEIRESIAS. I would not have come at all if

              you had not asked me.

           OEDIPUS. Could I have told that you’d talk

              nonsense, that/You’d come here to make a

              fool of yourself, and of me? (Sophocles,

              i.418-422)

**Dialog is formatted in block fashion. Notice there are no quotation marks and the parenthetical citation has no period after it.

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• Last Updated: Jan 3, 2023 9:01 AM
• URL: https://library.jeffersonstate.edu/AWH

Encyclopedia

Writing with artificial intelligence, quoting plays and poetry in mla.

• © 2023 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College

The rules for quoting drama and/or poetry in Modern Language Association (MLA) Style differ from those for quoting the genre of prose. This article discusses rules for using MLA style to format quotes from drama and poetry. Consult the MLA Handbook to learn more.

Quoting Poetry

The MLA Handbook offers specific guidelines for quoting poetry.

In addition to the amount quoted and line breaks, other factors that matter include stanza breaks, and unusual layouts.

Special Issues: Stanza Breaks, Unusual Layouts

Stanza Breaks: Mark stanza breaks that occur in a quotation with two forward slashes, with a space before and after them ( / / ) (78).

William Carlos Williams depicts a vivid image in “The Red Wheelbarrow”: “so much depends / / upon / / a red wheel / / barrow / / glazed with rain / / water / / beside the white / / chickens” (“Williams”).

Unusual Layouts: If the layout of the lines in the original text is unusual, reproduce it as accurately as you can (79).

The English metaphysical John Donne uses indentation in some of his poems to create unusual layouts, as the first stanza of including “A Valediction: of Weeping” demonstrates:

Let me pour forth My tears before they face, whilst I stay here, For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear, And by this mintage they are something worth, For thus they be Pregnant of thee; Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more, When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore. (lines 1-9)

Quoting Plays

When you must quote dialogue from a play, adhere to these rules:

• Set the quotation off from your text.
• Indent each name half an inch from the left margin and write it in all capital letters.
• Follow the name with a period and then start the quotation.
• Indent all other lines in the character’s speech an additional amount.
• When the dialogue shifts to another character, start a new line indented half an inch.
• Maintain this pattern throughout the quotation (80).

Example: One of the flashbacks in Margaret Edson’s Wit suggests Vivian Bearing’s illness causes her to question some of her previous interactions with students:

STUDENT 1. Professor Bearing? Can I talk to you for a minute?

VIVIAN: You may.

STUDENT 1: I need to ask for an extension on my paper. I’m really sorry, and I know your policy, but see—

VIVIAN: Don’t tell me. Your grandmother died.

STUDENT 1: You knew.

VIVIAN: It was a guess.

STUDENT 1: I have to go home.

VIVIAN: Do what you will, but the paper is due when it is due. (63)

Special Issues

Omissions: Follow the rules for omissions in quotations of prose (83).

Although some of the rules for quoting plays and poetry in MLA differ than those for quoting prose, understanding the guidelines will help you apply them in any scenario.

Donne, John. “The Bait.” The Complete English Poems . Penguin Books, 1971, pp. 43-4.

—. “The Break of Day.” The Complete English Poems . Penguin Books, 1971, pp. 45-6. Edson, Margaret. Wit. Faber and Faber, 1993.

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 39. The Pelican Shakespeare: The Sonnets . Penguin Books, 1970, p. 59.

Williams, William Carlos: “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/45502 .

Yeats, William. “A Prayer for My Daughter.” The Collected Poems . Ed. Richard Finneran. Scribner, 1983, pp. 188-190.

Brevity - Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence - How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow - How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity - Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style - The DNA of Powerful Writing

Recommended

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Structured Revision – How to Revise Your Work

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Credibility & Authority – How to Be Credible & Authoritative in Research, Speech & Writing

Citation Guide – Learn How to Cite Sources in Academic and Professional Writing

Page Design – How to Design Messages for Maximum Impact

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Quotation Marks with Fiction, Poetry, and Titles

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Block Quotations

You should use a block quotation when the quotation occupies four or more typed lines on the page. Although they are allowed in any type of writing, you will likely most often use them when quoting from fiction or literature. A block quotation is removed from the main body of your text. Indent one inch from the main margin (the equivalent of two half-inch paragraph indentations) and begin your quote. Maintain double spacing throughout, but you do not need to use quotation marks.

Gatsby experiences a moment of clarity while standing with Daisy on his dock. Fitzgerald writes:

Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now to him vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. (98)

Quoting Poetry

When you quote a single line of poetry, write it like any other short quotation. If the piece of poetry you are quoting crosses multiple lines of the poem itself, you may still type them in your text run together. Show the reader where the poem's line breaks fall by using slash marks.

If the quotation is four lines or longer, set it off like a block quotation (see above). Some writers prefer to set off two-line verse quotations for emphasis. Quote the poem line by line as it appears on the original page. Do not use quotation marks, and indent one inch from the left margin.

In his poem, "Mending Wall," Robert Frost questions the building of barriers and walls:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Writing Dialogue

Write each person's spoken words, however brief, as a separate paragraph. Use commas to set off dialogue tags such as "she said" or "he explained." If one person's speech goes on for more than one paragraph, use quotation marks to open the dialogue at the beginning of each paragraph. However, do not use closing quotation marks until the end of the final paragraph where that character is speaking.

Quotation Marks with Titles

Use quotations marks for:

• Titles of short or minor works
• Short Stories
• Short Poems
• One Act Plays
• Other literary works shorter than a three act play or complete book
• Titles of sections from longer works
• Chapters in books
• Articles in newspapers, magazines, or journals
• Episodes of television and radio series

Underlining or italics are used for the titles of long pieces or works that contain smaller sections.

MLA Style Guide: 8th Edition: Direct Quote

• Works Cited examples

Direct Quote

• Block Quote
• Paraphrase/Summary
• Indirect Quote
• Multiple Authors
• In-Text Exceptions
• Personal Communications
• MLA Handbook/Other Resources
• NoodleTools

IN-TEXT CITATIONS FOR A...

Quoted material should be reproduced word-for-word and exactly as it appears in the original source. Unless you indicate a change in brackets or parentheses, changes must not be made in spelling, capitalization, or interior punctuation.

Include the author's last name and page number(s). Only use the page number(s) themselves; do not include any abbreviations for ‘page’ such as ‘pg.’ or ‘p.’

If the quote is under four lines long, it should be incorporated into the text and enclosed using quotation marks. You may include the author’s name within your text or within the in-text citation:

Author Incorporated into Text Harper Lee writes as the character Atticus Fitch in To Kill a Mockingbird , giving advice to his young daughter in the famous line, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it" (36).

Author After Quotation "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it" (Lee 36).

If the quote is part or all of a single line of poetry, it can be incorporated into the text and enclosed using quotation marks. You may also include two or three lines in this same way, but you must use a slash mark (/) with a space on each side to separate the lines. You may include the author’s name within your text or within the in-text citation:

Author Incorporated into Text In the poem “Song of Myself,” part of the Leaves of Grass collection, Walt Whitman writes, "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then…. I contradict myself; / I am large….I contain multitudes" (1315-1318).

Author After Quotation "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then…. I contradict myself; / I am large….I contain multitudes" (Whitman 1315-1318).

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How to Insert Dialogue Into an MLA Paper

Byron walsh.

Inserting dialogue correctly into your paper using Modern Language Association (MLA) style can be confusing. MLA style is a system of formatting and citation requirements students in high school and college courses often use when submitting papers. Dialogue in your paper could be quoted by itself, included within a longer sentence you are quoting or as part of an extended quotation. Quotations of actual dialogue can enliven your prose and show your reader you understand precisely the subject you are covering. Using correct MLA style will meet the needs of your courses and teachers.

Explore this article

• Using Dialogue By Itself
• Identify the piece
• Place the dialogue within your paper
• Add your parenthetical reference
• Dialogue within a Quote
• Select the text
• Insert your quotation
• Do not include double quotations often
• Quotation of More Than One Line of Dialogue
• Use the slash mark
• Include lines from multiple characters
• Include parenthetical documentation

1 Using Dialogue By Itself

2 identify the piece.

Identify the piece of dialogue you want to use. For instance, if you are quoting "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde, when the character Algernon says, "More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read," you will use those words exactly in your paper.

3 Place the dialogue within your paper

Place the dialogue within your paper. Once you are ready to use your quote, begin with a quotation mark, then type the sentence you are quoting. Without adding a period, place another quotation mark at the end of your quote. (If your quotation ends with a question mark or exclamation point, include these marks at the end of the quote, inside the final quotation mark.)

4 Add your parenthetical reference

Add your parenthetical reference and final punctuation. Parenthetical references point readers to information within the list of references at the end of the paper. (See Resources.) For instance, the Oscar Wilde dialogue might be included using the following format: "More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read" (Wilde 12).

5 Dialogue within a Quote

6 select the text.

Select the text you would like to include. Sometimes, you will want to quote a sentence or more from a source that includes quoted dialogue. For instance, you might use a direct quote from a drama critic that includes a piece of dialogue. This is known as a "quote within a quote."

7 Insert your quotation

Insert your quotation, including the dialogue, then modify the quote marks so that the quotes around the dialog become single quotation marks. You begin your quote with double quotations, then use single quotations for the "quote within a quote." In a paper, this might look like: According to Smith, "Wilde's contention that 'More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read,' shows his disdain for the moral restraints of Victorian England" (Smith 223).

8 Do not include double quotations often

Do not include double quotations often. Instead, consider paraphrasing and including only the quote itself. For example: Smith argues that Wilde's view of Victorian morals is embodied by Algernon's contention that "More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read" (quoted in Smith 223). Note that when you quote dialogue quoted in another source, you use "quoted in" in the parenthetical reference.

9 Quotation of More Than One Line of Dialogue

10 use the slash mark.

Use the slash mark (/) to separate lines of dialogue when you are quoting three or fewer lines from the same character. This is used mostly with poems and plays written in verse, like Shakespeare's. For example: "The raging rocks/and shivering shock/shall break the locks..." (Shakespeare 9).

11 Include lines from multiple characters

Indent long sections of dialogue or those that include lines from multiple characters. Indent each line an extra half-inch, then type the name of the character speaking in all capital letters. Type the dialog without quotation marks.

12 Include parenthetical documentation

Include parenthetical documentation at the end of the indented section, one line below and 1 inch from the right margin.

• Avoid dialogue within quotes when you can. It is considered confusing.
• An MLA style guide is extremely helpful if you often must use MLA style.
• 1 Purdue Online Writing Lab; MLA Formatting Quotations; Tony Russell; 2011

About the Author

Byron Walsh has been a freelance writer and manager of communications since 2001, working with universities, hospitals and government agencies. His work has appeared in internal and trade publications for major West Coast health providers and regional newspapers. Walsh holds master's degrees in creative writing, literature and secondary education.

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MLA Citation Guide (9th Edition): In-Text Citation

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About in-text citations, no known author, quoting directly, paraphrasing, no page numbers, repeated use of sources, in-text citation for more than one source, long quotations, quoting and paraphrasing: what's the difference, signal phrases, avoiding plagiarism when using sources.

T here are two ways to integrate others' research into your assignment: you can paraphrase or you can quote.

Paraphrasing  is used to show that you understand what the author wrote. You must restate the meaning of the passage, expressing the ideas in your own words and voice, and not just change a few words here and there. Make sure to also include an in-text citation.

Quoting  is copying the wording from someone else's work, keeping it exactly as it was originally written. When quoting, place quotation marks (" ") around the selected passage to show where the quote begins and where it ends. Make sure to include an in-text citation.

If you refer to the author's name in a sentence you do not have to include the name again as part of your in-text citation. Instead include the page number (if there is one) at the end of the quotation or paraphrased section. 

Hunt explains that mother-infant attachment has been a leading topic of developmental research since John Bowlby found that "children raised in institutions were deficient in emotional and personality development" (358).

In MLA, in-text citations are inserted in the body of your research paper to briefly document the source of your information. Brief in-text citations point the reader to more complete information in the Works Cited list at the end of the paper.

When a source has no known author, use the first one, two, or three words from the title instead of the author's last name. Don't count initial articles like "A", "An" or "The". You should provide enough words to make it clear which work you're referring to from your Works Cited list.

If the title in the Works Cited list is in italics, italicize the words from the title in the in-text citation.

( Cell Biology  12)

If the title in the Works Cited list is in quotation marks, put quotation marks around the words from the title in the in-text citation.

("Nursing" 12)

When you quote directly from a source, enclose the quoted section in quotation marks. Add an in-text citation at the end of the quote with the author name and page number, like this:

"Here's a direct quote" (Smith 8).

"Here's a direct quote" ("Trouble" 22).

  Note: The period goes outside the brackets, at the end of your in-text citation.

Mother-infant attachment has been a leading topic of developmental research since John Bowlby found that "children raised in institutions were deficient in emotional and personality development" (Hunt 358).

When you write information or ideas from a source in your own words, cite the source by adding an in-text citation at the end of the paraphrased portion, like this:

​This is a paraphrase (Smith 8).

This is a paraphrase ("Trouble" 22).

Mother-infant attachment became a leading topic of developmental research following the publication of John Bowlby's studies (Hunt 65).

  Note: If the paraphrased information/idea summarizes several pages, include all of the page numbers.

Mother-infant attachment became a leading topic of developmental research following the publication of John Bowlby's studies (Hunt 50, 55, 65-71).

When you quote from electronic sources that do not provide page numbers (like webpages), cite the author name only. If there is no author, cite the first word or words from the title only. 

"Three phases of the separation response: protest, despair, and detachment" (Garelli).

"Nutrition is a critical part of health and development" ("Nutrition").

Sources that are paraphrased or quoted in other sources are called indirect sources. MLA recommends you take information from the original source whenever possible. 

If you must cite information from an indirect source, mention the author of the original source in the body of your text and place the name of the author of the source you actually consulted in your in-text citation. Begin your in-text citation with 'qtd. in.' 

Kumashiro notes that lesbian and bisexual women of colour are often excluded from both queer communities and communities of colour (qtd. in Dua 188).

(You are reading an article by Dua that cites information from Kumashiro (the original source))

  Note: In your Works Cited list, you only include a citation for the source you consulted, NOT the original source.

In the above example, your Works Cited list would include a citation for Dua's article, and NOT Kumashiro's.

If you're using information from a single source more than once in a row (with no other sources referred to in between), you can use a simplified in-text citation. The first time you use information from the source, use a full in-text citation. The second time, you only need to give the page number.

Cell biology is an area of science that focuses on the structure and function of cells (Smith 15). It revolves around the idea that the cell is a "fundamental unit of life" (17). Many important scientists have contributed to the evolution of cell biology. Mattias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, for example, were scientists who formulated cell theory in 1838 (20). 

 Note: If using this simplified in-text citation creates ambiguity regarding the source being referred to, use the full in-text citation format.

If you would like to cite more than one source within the same in-text citation, simply record the in-text citations as normal and separate them with a semi-colon.

(Smith 42; Bennett 71). 

( It Takes Two ; Brock 43).

 Note: The sources within the in-text citation do not need to be in alphabetical order for MLA style.

What Is a Long Quotation?

If your quotation is longer than four lines, it is a considered a long quotation. This can also be referred to as a block quotation.

Rules for Long Quotations

There are 4 rules that apply to long quotations that are different from regular quotations:

• Place a colon at the end of the line that you write to introduce your long quotation.
• Indent the long quotation 0.5 inches from the rest of the text, so it looks like a block of text.
• Do not put quotation marks around the quotation.
• Place the period at the end of the quotation  before  your in-text citation instead of  after , as with regular quotations.

Example of a Long Quotation

Vivian Gornick describes the process of maturing as a reader as a reckoning with human limitations:

Suddenly, literature, politics, and analysis came together, and I began to think more inclusively about the emotional

imprisonment of mind and spirit to which all human beings are heir. In the course of analytic time, it became apparent

that—with or without the burden of social justice—the effort required to attain any semblance of inner freedom was

extraordinary. Great literature, I then realized, is a record not of the achievement, but of the effort. 

With this insight as my guiding light, I began to interpret the lives and work of women and men alike who had

spent their years making literature. (x-xi)  

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How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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