When a source consists of only one page, such as a newspaper article, should I give the page number in my in-text citation?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

No. If a work is only one page, as in the example below, you should not include a page number in your in-text citation.

A lengthier article in New York City’s The World went even further, echoing Edwards’s suggestion of criminality in declaring Wilde’s novel “the sensation of the day in certain circles of society”—those circles “which call for constant police supervision” (Review).

Work Cited

Review of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The World, 17 July 1890, p. 5.

Note

The example is from Thomas Vranken’s introduction to “Oscar Wilde’s Book,” by E. J. Edwards, in PMLA, vol. 133, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 199–204.