Parenthetical Documentation

In the MLA format, "parenthetical documentation" is used to briefly identify the sources of information you have borrowed in writing your paper. Parenthetical documentation should be integrated smoothly into the text of your paper, rather than listed separately.

• The general rule is to cite the source right in the text of your paper. If the reader wants to get more information, they go to the Works Cited list at the end of your paper.
  
  If the author's name is mentioned in your writing (this is called a "signal phrase"), you only need to put the page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. The reader can then consult the list of Works Cited (explained below) at the end of the paper to get the complete citation.
  
  NOTE: Some sources, especially those on the Web, do not give page numbers. The general rule is to use a section number if it is given; otherwise just use the author name or, if no author is given, the first words of the title.
  

  Ross Parke notes that "natural fathers aren't the only ones raising children on their own. As more families split up, social workers note that stepfathers increasingly are being called on to bring up other people's kids" (52).
  
  According to Bernard Farber in Encyclopedia Americana, there is a trend toward waiting to marry and toward postponing the birth of the first child (6).
  
  According to the web site Our Fathers, "Almost 20 percent of fathers ask for child custody after divorce."

• You may decide not to highlight the source of some of your derived information. In such cases, at the end of the sentence enclose in parantheses both the author's last name and the page referred to. The reader can then consult the list of Works Cited at the end of the paper to get the complete citation.
  

  At the turn of the century many men worked long hours, which "entailed their absence from the family for most of the day: that was not a rejection of fatherhood but a necessary element of it" (McKee and O'Brien 54).
  
  Child support payments can be withheld from wages in 45 states (Schorr 33).

• For publications with no author given, you should include the first 2-3 key words from the title and the page number in parentheses.
  

  "Fathers today no longer know who they are or what their wives and children expect from them" ("Fathers Confused" 5), and this increases the likelihood they will abandon their families.

• If possible, you should quote or paraphrase material from the original source, but if you do use material that is within someone else's work, include the abbreviation qtd. in ("quoted in") and then refer to the source where you got the information. Use qtd. in even if it's a paraphrase and not a quote.
  

  Dr. Ann Rudolph contends that fathers who bond with their infant children are more likely to maintain lifelong contact (qtd. in Parke 112).

A list of works cited has all the sources that contributed ideas and information to your paper. (It is the same as a "bibliography.") It is arranged in alphabetical order by the authors' last names or, if the source doesn't list an author, by the first word of the title (ignore "A," "An," and "The"). The following sample works cited list is in correct order.

If you have a type of source not covered in the examples below, ask the librarian to show you the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th edition, or go to the MLA's web site (although not many details are given there).