Parenthetical Citations

Your citation must contain information so that the reader can access your references easily. The citation must contain the author’s last name and the page number in which the information was obtained. This needs to be between two parentheses.

1. This is a basic citation:

“The advocates of voucher programs say that one of its great benefits is to force public school systems to face their failings and improve” (Bronner, 48).

-generally after your quote, you want to explain what the quote mean or state why this information is important.

“The advocates of voucher programs say that one of its great benefits is to force public school systems to face their failings and improve” (Bronner, 48). If the schools are forced to do better, then there will be no need to move children into schools out of their district.

2. Sometimes your quote will be long. If the quote is longer than 4 typed lines you want to create a block quote. Block quotes do not have quotation marks, they are tabbed over twice and the period goes before the parenthetical citation.

Parents have always had this choice, but now with vouchers, less advantaged parents are simply getting the money to pay for this choice from the government. This choice extends to religious schools. There are facts about choice that are evident:

It would be unrealistic to expect that Catholic schools will expose their students to both sides of the abortion issue; that evangelical schools would provide a disinterested comparison of creation and evolution; that military academies would debate the value of disarmament and peace movements; that leftist schools would provide a balanced presentation of the positive and negative aspects of capitalism; or that white academies would explore different views towards race in the U.S. (McUsic,149)

3. There are times when you will use a quote from an author after you have already quoted or paraphrased. When an author’s words are used consecutively but as two separate quotes, you leave out the author’s name in the second and subsequent citations.

Yet another cry from opponents of the voucher plan is the fact that parents simply will not make the effort to get involved with the child’s education. “For a child to transfer to a better school, the parents must investigate all available options for their child. Then they must pursue whatever process is necessary to have the child enrolled and transported daily to the new school” (McUsic, 122). These critics believe that supporters of the voucher plan believe that once students move to another school, the old public school will have no one there to teach to and therefore shut down. “To create a legitimate threat requires a substantial number of parents in bad schools to have the time, energy, and education to place their children in different schools” (122).

4. There will be times when you cite a website. Since websites have no page numbers you don’t put one.

Results cited post-Milwaukee Choice Plan are not what one would expect. The sum of the evaluation can be stated as follows: “this school experiment...[has] not yet led to more effective schools...Choice creates enormous enthusiasm among parents...but student achievement fails to rise” (Greene).

5. Never cite dictionaries or Encyclopedias as one of your necessary sources.

The American Webster Handy College Dictionary (3rd Edition) defines equality as the act of becoming equal; to have the same status as another.