Question

If a student is going to use a direct quote from lines 12-14 of the Julius Caesar speech above, which would be the correct MLA in-text citation? A) “Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious;” (12-14). B) "Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; (12-14) C) “Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious;”. (Page 12-14). Eliminate D) “Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious;”(LINE 12-14)

Answer 1

For MLA in-text citation, with the choices given, you can eliminate C and D, right away. You do not put "Page" nor "Line" before the numbers. You simply put the number of the page or line in the parenthesis. 

Now you are left with A and B. When you quote, you need to enclose the whole quote in the quotation marks. As you can see B is not fully closed. Let's say that it may be a typo of the question, but nevertheless, B would still be wrong because the page numbers should be within the sentence thus the period (.) is after the page numbers indicated not before. 

If you look at A, it fits the criteria.