Main Body citations (which, remember, are abbreviated versions of the full citations that appear on your Reference List) can take up to four basic forms.
They can be either parenthetical or narrative in what we'll call their style; and either paraphrastic or direct quotation in what we'll call their nature.
In other words, here's your four basic options for a Main Body citation
| |
Style
|
Nature
|
Example
|
Option 1
|
Parenthetical |
Paraphrastic |
Socrates praised the superior beauty of the Thracians (Jowett, 1881). |
Option 2
|
Parenthetical |
Direct Quotation |
"...that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful." (Jowett, 1881, p. 1)
|
Option 3
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Narrative |
Paraphrastic |
Jowett's translation (1881), has Socrates praising the beautiful Thracians. |
Option 4
|
Narrative |
Direct Quotation |
Jowett (1881) translates Socrates' relative praise of the Thracians as, "equally, if not more, beautiful." (p. 1) |
For simplicity, from here on out we'll focus the basics of regular parenthetical - paraphrastic citation.
It's generally agreed that parenthetical - paraphrastic citation should be the most-common sort of citation in the Main Body of your paper.
Parenthetical means that all the key information of the citation is contained together inside a single parenthesis at the end of the sentence.
Paraphrastic means that you aren't use the exact words found in your source, but instead are paraphrasing or summarizing them.
In this type of citation, you'll list the author's last name and the year of publication in a parenthesis, like this:
(Jowett, 1881)
- If you had two authors, you'd connect their names with an ampersand, like this: (Jowett & Bennett, 1882)
- If you had three or more authors, you'd list ONLY the first author's name, followed by the phrase "et al." like this: (Jowett, et al., 1883)
"et al." is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase et alia. This phrase simply means, "and others."
- "Et al." should ONLY be used for Main Body citations. On your Reference List, you are expected to list ALL authors by name.
If you paraphrase an idea that comes from multiple sources:
use semicolons [;] to separate works by different authors
Example: Socrates praised the Thracians. (Jowett, 1881 ; Mintz, 2022)
use commas [,] to separate different works by the same author
Example: Socrates praised the Thracians. (Jowett, 1881, 1882, 1883 ; Mintz, 2022)
