MLA In-Text Citation: Examples for Every Case, Plus LaTeX

An MLA in-text citation is the author's last name and a page number in parentheses: (Okafor 23). No comma, no "p.", no year. It points the reader to one entry in the Works Cited list, and the page number tells them where in that source to look.

This page follows the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021). It explains the author-page rule, then works through every case that changes the basic form: two or more authors, corporate authors, no author, no page numbers, two works by one author, two authors with the same last name, indirect quotations, block quotes and repeated citations of the same source. It ends with a quick-reference table and a tested way to write MLA citations in LaTeX. For the Works Cited side, see MLA Book Citation.

The Author-Page Rule

MLA uses parenthetical citations built from two elements: whatever begins the Works Cited entry (usually the author's last name) and the location in the source (usually a page number). The citation goes at the end of the sentence or clause that uses the source, before the period:

Sustained reading on a screen fragments attention more than reading on paper (Okafor 23).

When the sentence already names the author, the parentheses hold only the page. This is called a signal phrase, and it is the form MLA prefers for anything you discuss at length:

Okafor argues that the effect is strongest in the first ten minutes (31).

Every citation must match a Works Cited entry. If the entry begins "Okafor, Adaeze," the citation says Okafor; if the entry begins with a title because there is no author, the citation uses the title. The citation is a label, not a description of the source.

Why there is no comma

The comma is the first thing APA writers get wrong when they switch to MLA. MLA writes (Okafor 23); APA writes (Okafor, 2024, p. 23). The MLA citation is deliberately minimal: the reader needs only the two pieces the Works Cited list does not already give them, the name to look up and the page to turn to. A comma would make "Okafor, 23" read like a list of two separate things. MLA uses a comma inside the parentheses only when something other than a plain page number follows the name: a short title (Okafor, Reading Mind 23) or a label such as par. or ch. (Harrow, par. 4). Those cases are covered below.

Punctuation and placement

• The citation comes before the sentence's period and after a closing quotation mark: …"fragments attention" (Okafor 23).
• If the quotation ends in a question mark or exclamation point, keep it inside the quotation marks and still add a period after the citation: "Is anyone still reading?" (Okafor 40).
• Put the citation at the end of the clause the source supports, not necessarily the end of the sentence: Reading on paper is slower (Okafor 23), but the gain in recall more than makes up for it (Harrow and Vance 50).
• No "p." or "pp." before page numbers, and a hyphen or en dash for ranges: (Okafor 23-25).

One, Two and Three or More Authors

Write "and", never an ampersand. With three or more authors, give the first author's last name followed by et al. with a period after "al" and no comma before it. In a signal phrase, "et al." is treated as plural: "Lindqvist et al. argue." The Works Cited entry uses the same cutoff, so "Lindqvist, Mikael, et al." in the list matches "Lindqvist et al." in the text.

Corporate or Organizational Author

When a report or page is written by an organization and no person is named, the organization is the author: (Ridgeline Literacy Institute 4). Two refinements from the handbook:

• Shorten long names in the parentheses by abbreviating words the handbook lists as abbreviable, such as Natl., Assn. and Dept.: (Natl. Reading Council 15). In a signal phrase, spell the name out.
• If the organization is both author and publisher, MLA drops it from the author position in the Works Cited entry and starts with the title. The in-text citation then uses the title: (Undergraduate Reading Survey 4).

No Author: Use a Shortened Title

A source with no author is listed by title in the Works Cited, so the title replaces the name in the citation. Shorten it to the first noun phrase and format it the way the entry does: quotation marks for an article, web page or chapter, italics for a book, film or whole website.

Keep the first word of the shortened title the same as the first word of the entry (ignoring A, An and The), because that is the word the reader will scan for in the alphabetical list. Do not write "Anonymous" unless the work is actually signed that way.

No Page Numbers: Web Sources, Paragraphs and Sections

Most web pages have no page numbers, and MLA does not want you to invent them. The rules:

• No numbering at all: cite the author alone, (Harrow), or name the author in the sentence and add nothing in parentheses. Do not count paragraphs yourself.
• Numbered paragraphs, sections or chapters in the source: use the label and number, with a comma after the author: (Harrow, par. 4), (Nakamura, sec. 2.1), (Okafor, ch. 3). The comma marks that what follows is not a page.
• E-books without fixed pages: cite the chapter, (Okafor, ch. 3), rather than a device-dependent location number.
• Audio and video: cite the time stamp as hours:minutes:seconds, (Okafor 00:02:15-20), with no comma because it is a location, like a page.

Two or More Works by the Same Author

If your Works Cited lists two works by Adaeze Okafor, (Okafor 23) is ambiguous. Add a shortened title after the name, separated by a comma, with no comma between the title and the page:

The effect is strongest in the first ten minutes (Okafor, Reading Mind 31), and it survives when the screen is a tablet rather than a laptop (Okafor, "Screens" 5).

In a signal phrase that names the author, give the title and page in parentheses: Okafor's later study found the same pattern ("Screens" 5).

Two Authors with the Same Last Name

When two different authors in your list share a last name, add the first initial: (A. Okafor 23) and (C. Okafor 88). If the initials also match, use the full first name: (Adaeze Okafor 23). This applies only when the last name alone would be ambiguous; otherwise never include first names in a citation.

Indirect Sources: "qtd. in"

If you quote someone whose words you found in another source, cite the source you actually read and mark it with qtd. in:

Earlier researchers concluded that "the page is a machine for attention" (qtd. in Okafor 54).

Name the original speaker in your sentence so the reader knows whose words they are. Only the source you read, Okafor, appears in the Works Cited. The handbook recommends going to the original whenever you can and reserving "qtd. in" for the times you cannot.

Block Quotes

A quotation that runs to more than four lines of prose or more than three lines of verse in your paper is set as a block:

• Start it on a new line, after an introducing sentence that usually ends with a colon.
• Indent the whole block 0.5 inch from the left margin; keep the right margin where it is.
• No quotation marks around the block. Keep it double-spaced like the rest of the paper.
• Put the parenthetical citation after the final period of the quotation, with no period after the citation. This is the reverse of the normal rule, where the citation comes before the period.
• For verse, keep the original line breaks and cite line numbers: (lines 3-5) the first time, then (6-8).

Okafor describes what readers lose on a screen:

The page is a machine for attention. Its edges tell the eye where to stop, its weight tells the hand how far there is to go, and nothing on it moves. A screen offers none of these signals, and the reader must supply them from memory, which is exactly the resource that reading was supposed to be spending on the text. (Okafor 23)

Notice that the sentence ends with "text." and the citation follows the period. Text that continues after a block quote starts at the left margin without an indent unless it begins a new paragraph.

Citing the Same Source Repeatedly

MLA has no ibid. Every citation repeats the author, with two exceptions the handbook allows:

• Consecutive citations of one source. If you cite the same source several times in a row with no other source in between, you may give only the page after the first citation: (Okafor 23) … (25) … (31). As soon as another source is cited, the next Okafor citation gets the name back.
• One source for the whole paper. If an essay analyzes a single work, say so in the first citation or in a sentence ("All quotations are from the 2024 Brightwater edition") and give page numbers only from then on.

Two or more sources in one parenthesis are separated by semicolons: (Okafor 23; Harrow and Vance 47). Order them however suits the sentence; the handbook does not require alphabetical order inside a citation.

MLA In-Text Citation Examples: Quick Reference

Ten MLA in-text citation examples for the cases above, all for fictional sources. The Works Cited entries they point to are shown in the LaTeX section below.

MLA In-Text Citations in LaTeX

The biblatex-mla package on CTAN implements the 9th edition for biblatex, so every case above can be generated from a .bib file rather than typed by hand. It is part of a full TeX Live install, which is what Octree, Overleaf and MacTeX ship, and it requires the biber backend: compile with latexmk -pdf, or in an editor that runs biber for you, rather than with plain pdflatex alone.

The citation commands

The style reads the author count from the .bib entry, so two authors come out as "Harrow and Vance" and three or more as "Lindqvist et al." without any change to the command. When two works by one author are cited, it adds the title itself: give each entry a shorttitle field so the parenthetical reads (Okafor, Reading Mind 23) rather than carrying the full title. A corporate author written in double braces, {{Ridgeline Literacy Institute}}, is printed in full. The style also tracks repeated citations of the same source, so the output can be shorter than the command suggests in a run of consecutive citations; check the compiled PDF against the rules above.

Complete example

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[letterpaper,margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage[style=mla]{biblatex}   % biblatex-mla (MLA 9); needs biber
\addbibresource{refs.bib}
\doublespacing

\begin{document}

Sustained reading on a screen fragments attention more than reading on
paper \autocite[23]{okafor2024}. Okafor argues that the effect is strongest
in the first ten minutes \autocite*[31]{okafor2024}. Two instructors report
the same pattern in online seminars \autocite[47]{harrow2022}, and a larger
team treats it as a design problem \autocite[112]{lindqvist2021}. A survey
of undergraduates found similar habits \autocite{ridgeline2025}, and one
chapter calls annotation an argument in itself \autocite[215]{nakamura2022}.
Earlier researchers had reached the same conclusion
\autocite[qtd.\ in][54]{okafor2024}. Several studies agree
\autocites[23]{okafor2024}[47]{harrow2022}.

\printbibliography[title={Works Cited}]

\end{document}

The matching refs.bib:

@book{okafor2024,
  author    = {Okafor, Adaeze},
  title     = {The Reading Mind: Attention in the Age of Screens},
  publisher = {Brightwater Press},
  year      = {2024}
}

@book{harrow2022,
  author    = {Harrow, Thomas and Vance, Miriam},
  title     = {Teaching Literature Online},
  publisher = {Northfield University Press},
  year      = {2022}
}

@book{lindqvist2021,
  author    = {Lindqvist, Mikael and Santos, Julia and Nakamura, Kenji},
  title     = {Digital Humanities: A Field Guide},
  publisher = {Ridgeline Academic},
  year      = {2021}
}

@incollection{nakamura2022,
  author    = {Nakamura, Kenji},
  title     = {Annotation as Argument},
  editor    = {Harrow, Thomas and Vance, Miriam},
  booktitle = {Teaching Literature Online},
  publisher = {Northfield University Press},
  year      = {2022},
  pages     = {211--238}
}

@online{ridgeline2025,
  author  = {{Ridgeline Literacy Institute}},
  title   = {Reading Habits of Undergraduates},
  date    = {2025-03-04},
  url     = {https://www.ridgelineliteracy.example/reading-habits},
  urldate = {2026-10-19}
}

Three details worth knowing. The \doublespacing from setspace and the 1-inch margins are MLA page formatting, not citation formatting; drop them if your template already sets them. The style maps "University Press" in a publisher field to "UP", as the handbook abbreviates it. And \printbibliography would print the heading "Works Cited" even without the title option, because the style's language file sets it; the option just makes the intent visible. The Works Cited entries themselves are explained on the MLA book citation page.

Fallback without biblatex

TeX Live has no MLA 9 style for classic BibTeX, so if your class forbids biblatex the honest option is to type the citations yourself. A one-line macro keeps the form consistent, and a hanging-indent macro builds the list. This compiles with any engine and needs no biber run:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[letterpaper,margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{setspace}
\doublespacing

\newcommand{\mlacite}[2]{(#1 #2)}  % \mlacite{Okafor}{23} -> (Okafor 23)
\newcommand{\wcentry}[1]{\noindent\hangindent=0.5in\hangafter=1 #1\par}

\begin{document}

Sustained reading on a screen fragments attention more than reading on
paper \mlacite{Okafor}{23}. Two instructors report the same pattern in
online seminars \mlacite{Harrow and Vance}{47}.

\clearpage
\begin{center}Works Cited\end{center}
\wcentry{Harrow, Thomas, and Miriam Vance. \emph{Teaching Literature Online}. Northfield UP, 2022.}
\wcentry{Okafor, Adaeze. \emph{The Reading Mind: Attention in the Age of Screens}. Brightwater Press, 2024.}

\end{document}

\hangindent=0.5in with \hangafter=1 indents every line of the paragraph after the first by half an inch, which is exactly the MLA hanging indent. You are responsible for alphabetizing the entries and for matching each \mlacite name to an entry. If you only need a numbered \cite for a draft, remember that a numeric style is not MLA and will have to be replaced before submission.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does an MLA in-text citation look like?

An MLA in-text citation is the author's last name and the page number in parentheses, with no comma and no "p.": (Okafor 23). It goes at the end of the sentence, after a closing quotation mark and before the period. If you name the author in the sentence, give only the page: Okafor argues that attention fragments on screens (23). The name must match the first word of the entry in the Works Cited list so the reader can find the full source.

How do you cite a source with no author in MLA?

Use a shortened version of the title in place of the author, formatted the way it appears in the Works Cited entry: quotation marks for an article or web page, italics for a book or website. Shorten to the first noun phrase, so "Reading on Paper vs. Screen: What the Research Says" becomes ("Reading on Paper" 2). Do not use "Anonymous" unless the work is actually signed that way.

How do you cite in MLA when there are no page numbers?

Give the author only: (Harrow). Do not count unnumbered paragraphs or invent page numbers from a printout. If the source itself numbers its paragraphs, sections or chapters, use that with a comma after the author: (Harrow, par. 4), (Nakamura, sec. 2), (Okafor, ch. 3). For audio or video, cite the time stamp: (Okafor 00:02:15-20). The comma appears only when a label like par. or ch. follows the name.

How do I make MLA in-text citations in LaTeX?

Use the biblatex-mla package from CTAN. Load it with \usepackage[style=mla]{biblatex}, add \addbibresource{refs.bib}, and cite with \autocite[23]{key}, which prints (Okafor 23); \autocite*[23]{key} prints (23) for sentences that already name the author, and \autocite[qtd.\ in][54]{key} prints (qtd. in Okafor 54). \printbibliography[title={Works Cited}] prints the hanging-indented list. The style needs the biber backend, so run latexmk or compile in an editor that runs biber for you.

Next Steps

In-text citations are half of MLA documentation; these guides cover the rest:

• MLA Book Citation – The Works Cited entry for every kind of book, with the matching in-text form
• AMA Citation Format – The numbered medical style, if your next course switches systems
• APA Headings – The five APA 7 heading levels, for papers that use APA instead
• LaTeX Footnotes – MLA allows content notes; this is how to set them
• Quotation Marks in LaTeX – Curly quotes and the quote environment for block quotations
• MLA Paper Template – A LaTeX template with the MLA heading, header, spacing and Works Cited already set up

Free LaTeX Tools

• LaTeX Preview – Paste the fallback example above and see the PDF without installing TeX
• LaTeX Templates – Essay and article templates ready for a bibliography
• LaTeX Symbols Reference – Dashes, ellipses and other punctuation MLA papers need