The purpose of the in-text citation is to direct the reader to the full source in the Works Cited page.
Creating a path from:
The source to
Your text using in-text citations to
Your Works Cited page
Example of In-text citation within the body of your paper:
"The content of The Impending Crisis is well known: it argued for slavery's harmful economic, political, and social impact upon non-slaveholding whites, a group largely overlooked by other writers of the time" (Brown 543).
Example of full citation on Works Cited page:
Works Cited
Brown, David. "Attacking Slavery from Within: The Making of The Impending Crisis of the South." Journal of Southern History, vol. 70, no. 3, Aug. 2004, pp. 541–76. Academic Search Complete, https://lib-proxy.sunywcc.edu:2590/10.2307/27648477.
In-text Citation:
(Brown 543).
Direct Quote (original text):
“The content of The Impending Crisis is well known: it argued for slavery's harmful economic, political, and social impact upon non-slaveholding whites, a group largely overlooked by other writers of the time” (Brown 543).
Paraphrasing (putting the text into your own words):
Unlike many books written at that time, the book The Impending Crisis discusses how Southern whites who did not own slaves suffered economically, socially, and politically (Brown 543).
Using a Signal Word: Signal words or phrases signal readers that an outside source is being used. Common signal words show emphasis, addition, comparison or contrast, illustration, and cause and effect.
Brown asserts that The Impending Crisis “argued for slavery's harmful economic, political, and social impact upon non-slaveholding whites, a group largely overlooked by other writers of the time” (543).
Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
acknowledges |
contends |
insists |
adds |
declares |
notes |
admits |
denies |
observes |
agrees |
describes |
points out |
argues |
disputes |
refutes |
asserts |
emphasizes |
rejects |
believes |
endorses |
reports |
claims |
grants |
responds |
compares |
illustrates |
suggests |
confirms |
implies |
writes |
Adapted from A Pocket Style Manual by Diana Hacker.
Hacker, Diana, and Nancy Sommers. A Pocket Style Manual. 7th ed., Bedford St. Martin's, 2014.