How to cite a quote from a book in APA, MLA and Chicago

You found the perfect quote three weeks ago. Now the paper is due, and you can't remember the page, the edition or even which book it came from. Here's how to cite a book quote correctly in the three most common styles, and how to stop losing the details in the first place.

Collect the facts once

All three styles are built from the same details. Get them from the copyright page of the edition you actually read:

• author's full name,
• full title, including any subtitle,
• publisher and year of that edition,
• the page number of the quote,
• translator or editor, if there is one.

The examples below use Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011, with a quote on page 45.

APA (7th edition)

In the text: (Kahneman, 2011, p. 45), or Kahneman (2011) argues that "…" (p. 45).

Reference list:

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Note the details that trip people up: initials instead of first names, only the first word of the title capitalized, and no city for the publisher. Quotes of 40 words or more go in an indented block without quotation marks.

MLA (9th edition)

In the text: (Kahneman 45). No comma, no "p."

Works Cited:

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

Quotes longer than four lines of prose go in an indented block.

Chicago (17th edition)

Chicago has two systems. Humanities subjects usually use notes and bibliography.

First footnote:

1. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 45.

Later footnotes for the same book: Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 45.

Bibliography:

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

The author-date system, common in the sciences, looks like this in the text: (Kahneman 2011, 45). Quotes of 100 words or more go in a block.

Ebooks without fixed page numbers

Kindle locations change with font size and device, so the styles advise against citing them. If your ebook shows page numbers that match a print edition, use those. If not, point to a chapter or section instead: (Kahneman, 2011, Chapter 3) in APA, or (Kahneman, ch. 3) in MLA. In a Chicago note, give the chapter where you'd normally give the page.

Translations and older books

Always cite the edition you read, not the original. If it's a translation, include the translator. In APA, also give the year the work was first published, after the reference. Page numbers belong to an edition: a quote on page 45 in one printing can be on page 52 in another.

Paraphrases and secondhand quotes

A paraphrase, where you put the author's idea in your own words, still needs a citation. MLA and Chicago give the page as usual. APA doesn't strictly require a page for a paraphrase but encourages it, especially in a long book, so your reader can find the passage.

Sometimes the quote you want is one your book quotes from somebody else. Ideally, find and cite the original. If you can't, cite the book you actually read and say it was quoted there: in APA, (Smith, 1990, as cited in Kahneman, 2011), with only Kahneman in the reference list; in MLA, (qtd. in Kahneman 45). Never cite the original as if you'd read it yourself.

A worked example

Lena saves a quote for her essay in her phone's notes app: the sentence and the book title, nothing else. Three weeks later she needs the page. She borrows the book from the library again, but it's a different edition, and the page numbers don't match anything she remembers. She spends an evening skimming chapters to find one sentence.

Her fix for the next essay is small. Every time she saves a quote, she writes the page right after it, plus a short code for the book. Once per book, she copies the full details from the copyright page into a list. When she writes, every citation takes seconds.

Why the source should live with the quote

Nearly every citation headache comes from separating a quote from its source. That's the reason ClearRead's quote bank keeps every underlined passage together with where it came from. Copying a quote gives you the citation in APA 7, MLA 9 or Chicago in one tap, and pasting an ISBN or DOI fills in the details. Whatever tool you use, check the result against the style guide your course asks for. Instructors sometimes want small variations.

A quick checklist

• Page number saved with every quote.
• Details taken from the edition you actually read.
• In-text citation matches an entry in the reference list.
• Long quotes formatted as a block.