Exercise: MLA In-Text Citations
Each item contains a sample student in-text citation based on a quotation from the original passage listed above it. After reading each in-text citation, circle Correct Usage if the item conforms to MLA style; circle Incorrect Usage if the item does not conform to MLA style.
1. The source is "The History of Ash Heaps," an article by Kevin Baker on page 12 of section 4 of the New York Times, January 5, 2003.
"Right from the beginning, the burghers of Old New Amsterdam were embroiled in battles to keep residents from simply throwing their garbage and the contents of their chamber pots into the streets," notes Kevin Baker (New York Times, 12).
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2. The source is "The History of Ash Heaps," an article by Kevin Baker on page 12 of section 4 of the New York Times, January 5, 2003.
After New York City had cleaned the streets for the first time, an old woman is supposed to have said, "I never knew that the streets were covered with stones before" (qtd. in Baker 12).
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3. The source is the New York Times editorial "Back to the United Nations" on page A40 on February 13, 2003. There is no author listed.
The option given Saddam Hussein by the United Nations and the United States today "leaves Iraq with little incentive to do anything but stall" (New York Times A40).
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4. The source is the online article "Buddhist Retreat: Why I Gave Up on Finding My Religion" by John Horgan from Slate.com, paragraph 4, posted February 12, 2003.
Buddhists in America often distance themselves from defining Buddhism as a religion and emphasize that it is more a way of finding spiritual balance (Hogan, par. 4).
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5. The source is Thomas Friedman's editorial "Present at . . . What?" on page A20 of the New York Times from February 12, 2003. This is the second Friedman source in this paper.
Friedman opines that for a successful rebuilding of Iraq, military intervention must be "the product of an international decision, not an American whim" ("Present" A22).
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6. The source is the book The 20th Century: A Brief Global History, page 113, by Richard Goff, Walter Moss, Janice Terry, and Jiu-Hwa Upshun, published by McGraw-Hill in 2003.
Because of its late entry into World War II, the United States military suffered significantly fewer combat deaths than the other Allied Powers (Goff et al. 113).
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7. The source is the book There Are No Children Here, page x, by Alex Kotlowitz, published by Random House in 1992.
Alex Kotlowitz, in There Are No Children Here, sums up the lives of children in an inner-city housing project with one boy's statement: "If I grow up, I'd like to be a bus driver." (x)
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8. The source is the article "What Global Language?" by Barbara Wallraff in the November 2000 issue of Atlantic Monthly, volume 286, number 5, pages 52-66.
According to an article in the Atlantic Monthly, the number of people in the United States who speak Chinese increased 98 percent from 1980 to 1990 (53).
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