In text citation are brief citations, enclosed in parentheses in the text of your paper at the point where the borrowed fact or idea appears. They give direct credit to a source you have used and guide the reader to the corresponding reference in your Works Cited list. Your in text citation must use whatever appears first in your Works Cited page for that entry. In text citations are as brief as possible, usually just the author and page, or just the page if you incorporated the author into your text. Your goal is to attribute your source without interrupting your text. Extra information interferes with the flow of you argument. These references are situated right after a quotation or paraphrase.
Short quotations (fewer than 4 lines of text)
Enclose the text in quotation marks. Place the author and page number after the quote, in parentheses. End with a period.
“It should never be forgotten that domestic English furniture was always intended for use as well as decoration” (Bly 134).
Long Quotations (more than 4 lines of text)
Long quotations should be set off from the text by beginning a new line, indented and double spaced. Quotation marks are not used. Periods come before the parenthetical reference (pg. 254-255/6.35).
As demonstrated by this quote:
One area that has facilitated research on furniture is the popularity of period costume drama for both film and television, enabling production companies to pay location fees to stately homes and houses. This has made money available to employ professional archivists to painstakingly forage through generations of old manuscripts, documents, letters and ephemera to reveal names and other details of suppliers of everything from farm equipment to fine furniture and household effects, goods and chattels. Thus positive proof of the dates of manufacture have been established, whereas before only supposition and opinion held sway. (Bly 7)
Paraphrase
A paraphrase is a rewording of an idea, information or argument written or spoken by someone else.
Bly emphasizes that we should remember that English domestic furniture had both decorative and practical uses (134).