How to Add Citation to Essay

Using direct quotes in your essay is a great way to use specific evidence to support your ideas, making the arguments more convincing. Also, citations support your topic or topic. However, if you want a professional essay, you need to know how to properly add citations whether using the MLA or APA style. Remember, if you use citations without crediting the source, it may be considered plagiarism. Also, when adding a citation to your essay, you must provide the page you referenced at the end of the essay. If you want to learn how to add citations to your essay, read Step 1 and get started.

Table of Contents

MLA style quote

The MLA (Modern Language Association) writing style requires you to cite the author’s name and page number when you add citations to your essay. If quoting poetry, you must quote lines instead of page numbers. Unlike the APA style, you do not need to provide the year of the citation in the body of the essay, all reference information will be placed at the end of the essay.

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Add short quotes. In the MLA style, short quotes are pieces of prose that are shorter than 4 lines or less than 3 verses. If you want to quote content that meets the above length requirement, all you have to do is 1) enclose the quote in quotation marks, 2) provide the author’s name, and 3) provide the number page. You can introduce the author’s name before the quote or put the name in parentheses after the quote. You can write the page number at the end without using “p” or any other notation. ^{[1] X Research Source}

Remember to write a few lines to introduce the quote; If you skip the introduction step, readers will not be able to navigate. Write and introduce the quote, then enclose the quote in quotation marks; then quote the author’s name and page number in parentheses and put a period (or any punctuation) at the end of the sentence. For example:
- According to some critics, literary fiction “is all but dead in the 21st century” (Smith 200). ^{[2] X Research Source}
You can introduce the author’s name in a sentence instead of in parentheses at the end of the sentence. Here is another example:
- Jones once asserted: “People who read fiction have been shown to be more empathetic towards others”(85).
You can introduce citations, quotes, and comments as follows:
- Many people believe that “Sport is meaningless” (Lane 50), while others are completely against it.
If there is punctuation in the original quote, you must include it in the essay:
- The main character Harry Harrison always starts the day by saying: “What a wonderful morning!” (Granger 12).
If you’re quoting poetry, you can quote the whole paragraph with that verse and use the “/” to split the line like the example below:
- As Miller asserts, “There’s nothing cuter/a cat sneezing” (11-12), and many cat lovers attest to this fact.

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Long quote. In the MLA style, long quotes are prose paragraphs longer than 4 sentences and verse passages longer than 3 sentences. If you want to quote, you must put them in a separate quote, without quotes. You can write a few lines of introductory quotes, ending with a colon. The first line of the quote is 1 inch (2.54cm) backward and double line apart. You can end the quote with a full stop, then use the author’s name and page number in parentheses. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

Here’s an example of how to introduce a long quote:
- The short story “The Things They Carry” lists the items soldiers had to carry during the Vietnam War, both to describe and to let readers understand their hardships:
  
  The things they brought with them were necessary. Includes P-38 can opener, pocket knife, heat tag, wristwatch, name tag, mosquito repellent, gum, cigarettes, salt, Kop-Aid, lighter, matches, pointer , Military card, dry food, 2 or 3 cans of water. (O’Brien, 2)
When you quote more than 2 paragraphs, you must use the quotation even if each paragraph has less than 4 sentences. The first line of each paragraph must be indented from the margin. Use parentheses (…) at the end of a paragraph to move on to the next paragraph.

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Poetry quotes. If you want to quote a poem or a piece of poetry, you should keep the paragraph format to convey the author’s intention. Here is an example: ^{[4] X Research Source}^{[5] X Research Source}

Howard Nemerov describes the wait for lost love in the poem “Storm Window”:

This lonely afternoon of memories

And missed desires, while the wintry rain .

(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)

Runs on the standing windows and away. (14-18) (Run on the window frame and go. (14-18))

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Add or remove words from the quote. You can use this method if you want to change the citation slightly to suit the context of the essay, or you want to omit information that is not related to the thesis of the essay. Here are some examples of adding citations to your essay in both cases:

Use brackets ([ and ]) to “write” specific information to help readers understand the context of the quote.
- Mary Hodges, a 20th-century realist writer of short stories, once wrote: “Many women [who write stories] feel less questioning than novelists, but they are not”(88).
Use parentheses (…) to omit unnecessary parts of the essay. Here is an example:
- Smith believes that many Ivy League students “feel that a career as a teacher is not as ambitious as a career in a bank”(90).

APA style quote

For the APA (American Psychological Association) citation style, you must provide the author’s name and page number in MLA format, in addition to the year of publication. With APA style, you must add the character “p.” before the page number in the citation.

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Short quote. When quoting short paragraphs (less than 40 words) in APA format, you must add the author’s name, year of publication, and page number (add a “p.” before the page number) to the citation. Here are a few examples: ^{[6] X Research Sources}

According to McKinney (2012), “Yoga is the best stress reliever for Americans in the 20th century” (p.54).
McKinney points out that “100 adults who practice yoga at least three times a week have lower blood pressure, better sleep habits, and less stress than the general population.” (2012, p.55).
She also points out, “Yoga relieves stress much better than running and cycling” (McKinney, 2012, p.60).

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Long quote. To quote a long paragraph in APA format, you must put the quote in a separate paragraph. The first line is back 1.3cm from the margin, the remaining lines stay the same. If the quote has multiple paragraphs, the first line of each paragraph must be indented by 1.3cm from the margin. Maintain double line spacing, quote after single quote after punctuation. The rules are the same as for a short quote, you must write the author’s name, year of publication, and page number in the introduction or in the quote. Here are some examples: ^{[7] X Research Sources}

Research by McKinney (2011) has shown the following:

High school English teachers who practiced yoga for 100 minutes a week for more than a month had better relationships with their students, they were more empathetic with students and colleagues, and were less stressed about grades and other problems. daily tasks, even finding new meaning to the text they’ve been teaching for years. (57-59).

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Rewrite the citation. If you are rewriting the citation in APA format, you should include the author’s name, year of publication, and page number in the rewrite paragraph. Here is an example:

McKinney believes that yoga is a form of physical and mental therapy (2012, p.99).
According to McKinney, yoga should become a compulsory subject in public schools (2012, p.55).

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Quotes from multiple authors. If you are citing more than one author in the APA essay style, you need to use an ampersand (“&”) to combine the two authors’ names in alphabetical order. Here is an example: ^{[8] X Research Sources}

Finally, research indicates that “Students who watch more TV than read books do not have a rich vocabulary.” (Hoffer & Grace, 2008, p.50).

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Quote from the Internet. When quoting from the Internet, you should try to find the author’s name, date, and paragraph number instead of the page number. Here is an example: ^{[9] X Research Source}

In his article, Smith writes “The world doesn’t need another blog”(2012, para.3) .
If the author’s name cannot be found, use the article name instead. If the date cannot be found, write “nd” instead of the date. Like the following example:
- Another study has shown that after-school help has a significant impact on student success (“Students and Tutoring,” nd).

Warning

Always cite properly. Otherwise, it will be considered plagiarism.

Steps

MLA style quote

APA style quote

Warning

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