Can someone please clearly explain what an in-text MLA citation is?
n MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what's known as parenthetical citation. Immediately following a quotation from a source or a paraphrase of a source's ideas, you place the authors name followed by a space and the relevant page number(s).
Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).
When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work, or italicize or underline it if it's a longer work.
Your in-text citation will correspond with an entry in your Works Cited page, which, for the Burke citation above, will look something like this:
Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966.
Bobpursley is exactly right. And if you need to see specifics regarding all different types of resources and how to cite them, here is a really good website:
http://wwwold.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/
Hold your cursor over the words CITING SOURCES and choose from the secondary menu that shows up: books, newspaper or magazine articles, Internet sites, etc.
=)
To provide a clear explanation, an in-text MLA citation is a method used in MLA style to indicate when you have used information or ideas from a source in your own writing. It involves including the author's name and page number within parentheses directly after quoting or paraphrasing the source.
For example, if you were quoting Kenneth Burke's statement that "human beings have been described as 'symbol-using animals'," your in-text citation would look like this: (Burke 3).
However, if the source you are using does not have a known author, you would instead use a shortened version of the title of the work. If the work is short, you would place the title in quotation marks. If the work is longer, you would italicize or underline the title.
It's important to note that each in-text citation in your writing should correspond with a full bibliographic entry in your Works Cited page. This page lists all the sources you have cited in your work. In the example above, the full bibliographic citation for Burke's work would include his name, the title of the book (Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method), the place of publication (Berkeley), the publisher (University of California Press), and the year of publication (1966).
If you need specific guidelines on how to cite different types of sources, such as books, newspaper or magazine articles, or internet sites, you can refer to the following website: http://wwwold.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/. By hovering your cursor over the words "CITING SOURCES" on the website and choosing from the secondary menu that appears, you can find detailed instructions for citing various types of resources.
I hope this explanation helps!