MLA citation style

In-text citations - Long quotations

If you are quoting text that is longer than four typed lines in your paper, block indent the passage half an inch (1.27 cm) from the left margin. Do not surround the quotation with quotation marks. The parenthetical reference follows the final punctuation.

Example:

Anderson argues that all nations can be measured:

The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the members of the human race will join their nation in the way that it was possible, in certain epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet. (7)