How To Quote Poems In Mla

If you use a quote from a poem in an mla format essay place the line numbers of the poem in parentheses right after the closing quotation marks with the closing punctuation right behind the parentheses.

How to quote poems in mla. Put a space before and after the slash. To separate the poems lines you should place some slashes adding extra space on each side. When you quote a single line of a poem or part of a line simply put it in quotation marks as you would for any other quote. If an author quotes three lines the second line number is excluded and a dash used to signify the exclusion for instance jonas 12 14.

Quoting poetry in the text the format for quoting poetry in mla depends on how much you are quoting. If you quote two or three lines use a forward slash to mark the line breaks. Then quotations that are longer than three lines apply the same in text citation format. Indent all lines one inch from the left margin of the paper per mla format.

However you will need to include a forward slash to indicate a line break or a double slash for a stanza break. The mla style limits short quotes to three or fewer lines in a verse. Do not paraphrase the lines and put them in the order they appear in the original text. How to quote poetry in mla.

Maintain double spacing and include all punctuation as it is written in the poem.