Get the essential information for the source (or sources) that you want to cite after your sentence. For parenthetical citations that follow the MLA style guide, these include: the author's last name; the title of the work that you are citing; and the number of the page, the line (if you are citing poetry), or the paragraph (if your source has no page or line numbers) where the information that you have cited can be found. The required elements of your citation in the APA, Chicago, and Turabian styles are the same as those for the MLA citation except that the title of a source is usually replaced by the year of a source's publication.
Type an open parenthesis after your sentence, but before the period. Make sure that there is one space between the last letter of your sentence and this open parenthesis.
Type the author's last name and then make a single space.
Type a shortened form of the source's title, but only if you are using many sources by the same author in your paper. The first noun in the article or book's title will work for this shortened version of the title. If the work that you are citing from is a book, make sure that the title is either italicized or underlined. If the work that you are citing from is an article, make sure that you put its shortened title in quotation marks. If you are following the APA, Chicago or Turabian style guide, type the source's year of publication rather than its title in this position regardless of whether or not you are using multiple sources by the same author.
Type the number of the page, line or paragraph on which your cited information or idea appears if you are following the MLA style guide. If you are following the APA, Chicago or Turabian style guide, the number of the page, line or paragraph can usually be left out of your parenthetical citations.
Add a semicolon after the page number if you need to cite more than one source in the same parenthetical citation (if you refer to more than one source in the same sentence). Make sure that there is a single space to separate the semicolon from the next name. For example: (Mitropoulos "Shinto" 129; Fitzpatrick 191 .
Type a closing parenthesis after you have included all of the necessary citations. Your completed citation should look like one of these if you are following the MLA style guide: (Mitropoulos 13) for a reference to a source that has a unique author within the scope of your paper; (Mitropoulos "Shinto" 129) for a source by an author who is the creator of more than one of your sources; (Mitropoulos "Shinto" 129; Fitzpatrick 191) for multiple citations where one author has multiple works in your paper; or (Mitropoulos 129; Fitzpatrick 191) for multiple citations of two different authors who only have one of their works in your paper. Finish your sentence with a period placed directly after the closing parenthesis.
If you are following the APA, Chicago, or Turabian style guides then your citations will most likely look like this: (Mitropolous 2009) for a single author; or (Mitropolous 2009; Fitzpatrick 2009) for multiple authors.