MLA question

Spectral Swallow

Hey, I'm trying to refresh my memory on MLA and most of it's still there, but for some reason I can't remember how you do the parenthetical citation(or if you even need to) if you aren't directly quoting somebody.

For example, if I was doing a paper on George Orwell and I read that he was born in Michigan, would I need to say:

George Orwell, who was born in Michigan at the turn of the century (Smith 235).

Or just leave off the citation? For some reason I think I'm getting totally screwed up over thinking it.

twmjr

I believe that whether you or paraphrasing or directly quoting it requires a parenthetical citation. Your example above looks correct to me.

Disclaimer that I haven't dealt with MLA in a number of years.

Kate of Lokys

Generally speaking, if a piece of information is readily available from multiple sources, you don't need to cite it. Which is good, because if you needed to cite absolutely everything, a four-page undergrad history paper would have, like, two pages of bibliography, and every other word would be a citation:

"New France was established in 1634 (Anderson 507), and its initial population of 487 (Jacoby 49) was composed primarily of farmers and traders (Kozlov 118). The traders exchanged common European goods such as woven cloth and glass beads (Pynchon 250) for cured pelts provided by the local tribes (Hunter 91)."

See, that's just ugly. And superfluous. Most of those details fall into the (admittedly nebulous) domain of common knowledge, and even things like that specific date aren't the product of any single researcher's work. Citations are only really needed when you're directly or indirectly referencing someone's ideas or original research. So, "George Orwell was born in India in 1903" doesn't need a citation. But something like "According to Smith, Orwell's writings were profoundly influenced by the circumstance of his birth in India: although his family moved to England when Orwell was one year old, his awareness of his 'inherent foreignness' (338) spurred his critical examination of English society" would need a citation, because it's invoking someone else's theories.

Edit: if your question was just "do I still need to cite specific information if I'm just paraphrasing it," then the answer is yes. But if you're talking about the kind of information you listed in your example, then the answer is maybe - it depends on how specific it is. If in doubt, refer to the Online Writing Lab at Purdue. It is awesome.

The OWL on when to cite stuff wrote:

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations or common knowledge. Remember, this is a rhetorical choice, based on audience. If you're writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, they'll have different expectations of what constitutes common knowledge.