MLA citations appear in two places. The first is in the text of a paper or publication, and there are two examples of this in action in the left column below. The other is in a Works Cited list that appears at the conclusion of the paper or publication, which the reader can use to trace the in-text citations back to the complete source in which the quotation or reference appears.
Citation Example by Source
In-text citations
The MLA citation style uses short in-text citations instead of footnotes that indicate the source of a quotation or other information that requires citation.
Example #1 - author reference in the sentence
Wilson Kimber notes that "Only a small portion of Delsarte posing in Iowa was dedicated to the representation of Greek statues," which is the only subject depicted in Meredith Willson's The Music Man (92).
Example #2 - author not referenced in the sentence
Many fans of Meredith Willson's The Music Man may be surprised to learn that "only a small portion of Delsarte posing in Iowa was dedicated to the representation of Greek statues" (Wilson Kimber, 92).
Citation Help
Works Cited List -----
Author Last Name, Author First Name. Title of book. Publication location:
Publisher, Date of Publication. Print.
Getz, Christine Suzanne. Music in the Collective Experience in Sixteenth-Century Milan.
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Print.
Works Cited List -----
Author Last Name, Author First Name and Author First Name Author Last Name.
Title of book. Publication location: Publisher, Date of Publication. Print.
Hepokoski, James and Warren Darcy. Elements of Sonata Theory: norms, types,
and deformations in the late eighteenth-century sonata. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006. Print.
Works Cited List -----
Author Last Name, Author First Name, eds. OR trans. Title of book. Publication location:
Publisher, Date of Publication. Print.
Wierzbicki, James, Nathan Platte and Colin Rost, eds. The Routledge Film Music
Sourcebook. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Works Cited List -----
Author Last Name, Author First Name. Title of book. Trans. OR Ed. by First Name
Last Name. Publication location: Publisher, Date of Publication. Print.
Schoenberg, Arnold. Theory of Harmony. Translated by Roy E. Carter. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978. Print.
Works Cited List -----
Author Last Name, Author First Name. "Book chapter." In Title of book, translated
OR edited by First Name Last Name, page range. Publication location: Publisher,
Date of Publication.
Weber, William. "The History of Musical Canon." In Rethinking Music, edited by
Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, 336-355. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.