Question

Which rules must be followed for an MLA citation to be correct? Select four options.

The author’s name, if known, must be included.
Both opening and closing quotation marks must be used when quoting directly from a text.
The complete citation must be added to the works cited page.
The author’s name should be included only if the source is a book.
A parenthetical citation must be included before the quotation from the source.
The author’s name can be placed either before the quotation or within parentheses.
A closing quotation mark should be eliminated if the quotation is longer than one line.

Answer 1

Correct selections: 1, 2, 3, 6.

Brief reasons:
- The author’s name, if known, should be included (either in a signal phrase or in a parenthetical citation).
- Use both opening and closing quotation marks for short, direct quotations (long quotations are formatted as block quotes without quotation marks).
- A complete citation for each source must appear on the Works Cited page.
- The author’s name may appear in the sentence (signal phrase) or inside the parentheses (parenthetical citation).

Why the others are incorrect:
- The author’s name is not required only for books (it applies to any type of source when available).
- The parenthetical citation is placed after the quotation (usually at the end of the sentence), not before it.
- You do not simply “eliminate a closing quotation mark” for long quotations; MLA uses block-formatting for long quotations with no quotation marks at all.