: MLA format for a book summary I am to write a book "review" as an assignment, but really it's just a book summary. Our professor wants us to use the MLA format in this book review. Of course,

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MLA guidelines suggest that, when citing an entire work, "it is best to paraphrase the information being used. This way, the author's name (or the name of the work, if it is anonymous), is mentioned in the sentence, but there is no need for particular documentation at the end of the sentence." The example given is as follows:

Turner's study served to redirect radically the discourse on Gullah that had developed to that point.

So, even though there is no parenthetical citation, you're still clearly indicating what work you are citing. Then all you need to do is reference the work in your bibliography.

Finally, when it becomes necessary to quote from the work, or you want to make clear what page in the work you're referring to, simply provide an in-line citation referencing the page number, since you've already made it explicit what work you're referring to. Example:

The book "Blah Blah Blah" is an exploration of waffle in the 21st Century. As the author makes clear, "the advent of on-line communication has made it easier than ever before to disseminate blah blah to a wide audience" (5). He goes on to elaborate that "blah blah is also now a load of wibble" (32).

See "repeated citations from the same source" for a further example.

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One way to go at this would be to treat it like any other writing assignment. Include the book you are reviewing in your Works Cited list, in MLA or whatever format your professor prefers. Then in the paper, when quoting or paraphrasing, you can use a parenthetical like (Surname 71). Unless the book's chapters are extremely short, a one-paragraph summary of a chapter should not have too much direct quotation or close paraphrasing.

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