Examples of Documented Material
(adapted from the MLA Handbook, 6^th ed.)

1. A Tale of Two Cities begins, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" (Dickens 35).

[Note that both author and page number are cited in parentheses.]

2. William L. Rivers notes, "Presidential control reaches its zenith under Andrew Jackson" (7).

[Because the author is mentioned in the sentence, only the page number is cited in parentheses. Verbs that can be used to introduce quotes include notes, states, concludes, writes, maintains, remarks, emphasizes, claims, points out, and argues. If you are quoting dialogue, you may also use says or asks.]

3. Shelley held a bold view: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World" (794).

[You may use a colon after a full sentence to introduce a quote.]

4. In response to Mr. Bennet's teasing, "The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only, 'Nonsense, nonsense!'" (Austen 5).

[When quotation marks are included in the original text you are quoting from, the internal (or original) quotation marks become single.]

5. According to one historian, "Medical thinking . . . stressed air as the communicator of disease" in the Middle Ages (Tuchman, par. 5).

[Use an ellipsis -- three periods with spaces in between -- to show that words were left out of the middle of the quoted sentence. When citing an internet source, include the author's last name, a comma, and then the paragraph number.]

6. International espionage was as prevalent as ever in the 1990s ("Decade" 26).

[Even if you put information from your source in your own words, you still must provide a citation at the end of the sentence.  If the source does not list an author, use the first word or two from the title in your parenthetical citation.]

 

7. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph and the others face the horror of their actions:

       The tears began to flow and sobs shook him.  He gave himself

                 up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of

       grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. . . . [I]nfected by that emotion,

                 the other little boys began to shake and sob too.  (Golding 186-187)

[Long quotations (4 lines or longer) are indented ten spaces without quotation marks, and the period is placed before the parenthetical citation. Note that a period followed by an ellipsis indicates material left out between two sentences, rather than in the middle of one. The I in Infected appears in brackets because it is not capitalized in the original.]

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