HIST. 111 - U.S. 19th Century History - Prof. Vecchio - Spring 2021: In-Text Citations

The purpose of the in-text citation is to direct the reader to the full citation in the Works Cited page. 

Creating a path from:

                                    The original 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:

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. 541–576. Academic Search Complete, lib-proxy.sunywcc.edu:2061/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=14078345&site=ehost-live.

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):

The book The Impending Crisis, unlike many books written at that time, discusses how Southern whites who did not own slaves suffered economically, socially and politically (Brown 543).

Using a Signal Word (asserts):

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).

Signal words or phrases signal to readers that an outside source is being used. Common signal words show emphasis, addition, comparison or contrast, illustration, and cause and effect.

Some examples:

        According to literary critic Harold Bloom...

        A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019 indicates that...

        Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”

Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:

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.