Parenthetical Citation

Formal and Informal Citation
We cite sources to give credit to them. 
We cite sources to avoid plagiarizing.
Our seventh grade core requires you to understand how to use informal citation.

If you didn't know it before you read it, 

you need to cite it!

Formal:  Formal citations will include a bibliography(works cited page)  at the end of the paper, and will require carefully formatted page set-up, footnotes, endnotes, etc. See an example of a paper written with formal MLA style: http://academictips.org/mla-format/mla-format-sample-paper/  Notice that this paper uses some signal phrases, too.

Informal:  For an informal citation, you tell where you got the information right in the sentence or sentences where you report the information.  
Seventh graders need to be able to use informal citation.  

+++++

An informal citation has a signal phrase, 
as much information as you can get in about where you got the information, 
and a piece of important and easily understood piece of information about your subject. 

Example:   (signal phrase) According to (information about the source) Jaroslaw Bilocerkowycz, Ph.D in the article he wrote for World Book Online about Lithuania,  (a piece of important and easily understood piece of information about your subject) the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in 1940, it was invaded  by  the Germans in 1941 and the Lithuanians  attempted to establish their own government, but the Germans ruled until Russia regained control in 1944.  

(information about the source)David M. Glanz (signal phrase) reports (information about the source) in his World Book Online article "Gulag" that  (a piece of important and easily understood piece of information about your subject) the  "NKVD was the secret police force of Communist Russia and the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1943."

                                            

Parenthetical Citation
What is Parenthetical Citation?
Parenthetical citation is when a writer directly puts into the text a note from where he or she got the information. Parenthetical or “in-text” citation allows your reader to know from what source each idea/fact came.

This is how it looks in the text of your paper:
“In 2007, 37 percent of American adults sought medical information from the internet regarding a health problem they were experiencing before consulting a doctor” (Smith 38). 

In the example above, notice that the author’s name and the page number on which this fact was found are set off from the text within parenthesis.
Note also that the punctuation of this parenthetical citation is also important.

The reader would understand from this citation that on page 38 of Smith’s book, this fact is mentioned. Furthermore, since the words are contained within quotes, the above example illustrates that this is a direct quote from that page.

Here is an example of the same idea presented as an indirect quote (paraphrase):
Instead of going to a doctor right away, a recent study found that 37 percent of Americans are now turning to the internet for medical information (Smith 38).

Definitions: 
Citation—is the identification of a specific idea or quote taken from a source.
Direct Quote—is a quote in which the author uses words from a source exactly as they were written. The words are taken verbatim. A direct quote is indicated by putting the words in
quotation marks (“ ”). A direct quote must be cited.
Indirect Quote—is a quote in which an author paraphrases, or puts into his/her own words, an idea from a source. An indirect quote must be cited.

from http://cimarron.edmondschools.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/12/MLA-style-guide.pdf


More:  https://writingwithsharonwatson.com/in-text-citations-middle-school/