Sometimes, a source needs to be cited in a piece of prose that doesn’t lend itself to the kind of documentation appropriate for research papers. In a short, informal, or nonacademic piece of writing—such as a letter to the editor or an informational brochure like the one shown in the examples below, from an art school’s one-page tip sheet for new graduates looking for ad agency jobs—the MLA’s guidelines for formatting a works-cited-list entry can easily be adapted to a parenthetical citation.

When bibliographic facts are stated in parentheses, follow the same pattern as in the works-cited list, with two exceptions: the name of the author is given in normal order (not reversed), and periods after elements are converted into semicolons.

Tip 5: Your resume should stick to the facts—“Don’t do a cute resume” (Luke Sullivan; Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads; 4th ed., Wiley, 2012, p. 325).

If the name of the author and the title of the work are given in the running text, they do not need to be repeated in parentheses. The parenthetical information begins with the element that follows the title of the source.

Tip 5: Your resume should stick to the facts. As Luke Sullivan advises in Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads: “Don’t do a cute resume” (4th ed., Wiley, 2012, p. 325).

Captions, too, may need to document a source. Sources are documented the same way in captions that they are in parentheses.

Fig. 1. Charles Rennie Mackintosh; chair of stained oak; 1897–1900, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.