Hi Shaquita,

The shortened title is written with the same formatting as the full title would be. So in the case of a film, you would write the full title in italics, and should therefore write the shortened title in italics (no quotation marks).

I had the same question as above. Now my question is about the answer.
Is “Basics” italicized as well or is the shorten title is only in quotations?
Asking because my title is Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle. When referring to the contents of the film that I want to quote in the paragraph, would it be shorten to Superheroes(italicized) or Superheroes(italicized and in quotations)?

Hi Meredith,

That’s a tricky situation. The fact that the quote contains those in-text citations suggests that the author is paraphrasing the ideas of someone else. So in order to quote those ideas, it would be best to find them in the original source and cite them directly from there.

MLA does suggest that if you need to cite a second-hand quote, you can include the phrase “qtd. in” in your citation, but that doesn’t really make sense for a paraphrase. If you do want to go ahead with quoting that part of the article, my best suggestion is to remove the in-text citations from the quote itself but explain them in your own text, e.g. Citing Moore (36) and Davis (44), Smith writes that “…” (55).

But the best approach is probably to locate the original sources and cite them.

Hi Arlissa,

You can check out our article on citing songs in MLA style for examples of this.

I’m trying to cite an article, that already has a lot of in-text citations in it. The quote I want to use has two in-text citations in the middle of it. Do I have to include those in the quote, and if I include them do I have to cite more sources on my references page?

Hi Amanda,

Yes, you’d use the last name of the play’s author in your parenthetical citation. On the Works Cited page, you’d cite the play itself but also give details of the textbook it’s published in. See the example under “Collection or anthology” here to get an idea of how to format this.

Hi Owen,

MLA actually suggests using the word “and” between two works by the same author cited in the same set of parentheses, and using commas if there are three or more works. So for example, (Woolf, Room and To the Lighthouse) or (Woolf, Room, To the Lighthouse, and “Modern Fiction”).