"When you quote, reproduce the source text exactly. Do not make changes in spelling, capitalization, interior punctuation, italicization, or accents that appear in the source."
(MLA Handbook, 9th ed. p. 253)
Short Quotations
- If a quotation runs no more than four lines, put it in double quotation marks and incorporate it into the text. Put single quotation marks around quotations that appear within those quotations.
- Punctuation marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons should appear after the parenthetical reference. Other punctuation such as question marks and exclamation marks should appear within the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted passage, but after the parentheses if they are part of your text.
(MLA Handbook, 9th ed. p. 254)
Examples
Shelley thought poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the World” (794).
Dorothea responds to her sister, “what a wonderful little almanac you are, Celia!” (7).
Long Quotations
- If a quotation runs to more than four lines in your paper, set it off from your text by beginning a new line, indenting half an inch from the left margin. For a single paragraph or part of a paragraph, do not indent the first line more than the rest of the quotation.
- Your prose introducing a quotation should end with a colon, except when the grammatical connection between your introductory wording and the quotation requires a different mark of punctuation or none at all.
- Do not use opening and closing quotation marks.
- For long quotations, a period at the end of a quotation is placed before the parentheses.
- If starting a new paragraph within the block quotation, indent its first line.
(MLA Handbook, 9th ed. pp. 254)
- If the original text includes quotation marks, format them as double quotation marks to indicate dialogue or quotations within the block.
(MLA Handbook, 9th ed. pp. 265-266)
Example
At the conclusion of Lord of the Flies, Ralph, realizing the horror of his actions, is overcome by
great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under
the back smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the
other little boys began to shake and sob too. (186)
