The secret to in-text citation

Most papers written for English classes or the humanities require MLA citation. That means you'll have to create a works cited page as well as in-text citation for the sources you used. You may already know that in-text citation means putting some words inside parentheses after sentences in your paper that have used a source for information. But here is where people get creative. They don't know what goes in the parentheses, so the fortunate ones put the web address or part of the title, hoping that will be OK. The unfortunate folks don't put anything and then can't remember where the quote or summary came from! By all means, please put anything temporarily into those parentheses that reminds you of the source. This will save you time and effort because you won't have to hunt desperately later. However, if you want to put the correct thing inside the parentheses, here's the secret. Create your works cited page first, listing all your sources in correct MLA style. Then, whatever the first word is in that source's entry (the word that will hit the left margin, since all other lines for that entry will be indented), that's the word that goes in the in-text parentheses, plus a page number for the quote/summary if it has one. Also, keep any punctuation consistent. An author's last name will simply look like (Prill 36), but if there is no author and the first word is an article's title, then keep the quotes around it like ("Secret" 36) and drop any "The" or "A" that begins it.