MLA--parenthetically citing authors with same name, different books?

[La_Llorona]

So I tutor sprogs on occasion, and one of the sprogs has an elementary type of research paper assigned to him and wants me to look over it. “All right,” I say, and it looks spiffy, except for one thing. Teacher specifies MLA format, and Sprog wants to cite two different books with the same author.

So the works cited page looks like this:

Smith, So-And-So. Blah-Di-Blah. City: Blah-Blah Press, 1994.

—. Thus-and-Such. City: Blah-Blah Press, 1994.

But how do parenthetical citations work in this case? Sprog knows not, and I haven’t used MLA in years. I do have some books about using MLA, but they don’t seem to have what I’m looking for. How is one supposed to distinguish between different books with the same author in parenthetical citations? Does it go like this:

Now is the time (Smith Thus-and-Such 49) for all good men to come to the aid of the party (Smith Blah-Di-Blah 85).

or what? That’s the only remotely logical thing I can think of, but I have no idea how it ought to go. Sprogs are depending on me! Help!

[mhendo]

@La Llorona

Now is the time (Smith Thus-and-Such 49) for all good men to come to the aid of the party (Smith Blah-Di-Blah 85).

I don’t have a copy of the MLA handy, but i think you’re pretty close here. Only i don’t think you even need to put the whole title. You only need to put enough of the title to distinguish one work from another. So, if your two books are:

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

and

Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

you would cite thus:

We learn right at the beginning of Douglass’s first autobiography that his mother’s name was Harriet Bailey (Douglass, Narrative, 1), but in his second memoir he talks first about his grandparents (Douglass, Bondage, 3).

Not a very elegant or interesting sentence, but you get the drift.

Now, the only thing i’m not sure about is whether the title fragment should be in quotation marks or not. I know that book titles are generally either underlined or italicized, but i seem to recall that, in cases like this where the title is shortened for a citation, it should go in quotation marks.

Maybe someone who actually has the MLA handy will be along soon to help out.

[Queen_Bruin]

My MLA guide sez that including the title in abbreviated form in the parenthetical is A-ok.

[UncaStuart]

@La Llorona

Does it go like this:

Now is the time (Smith Thus-and-Such 49) for all good men to come to the aid of the party (Smith Blah-Di-Blah 85).

or what?

Looking at my copy of the MLA Handbook 6ed (I don’t have a copy of the MLA Style Manual lying around), Section 6.4.6, Citing Two or More Works by the Same Author or Authors, agrees with how you’ve laid it out above, except that a comma follows the author’s name. (Smith**,** Thus-and-Such 49). It goes on to say that if you’ve stated the author’s name in the text, the cite would be

Now is the time (Thus-and-Such 49) for all good men to come to the aid of the party (Blah-Di-Blah 85).

and if you’ve mentioned both the author’s name and the title, then just parens with the page numbers.

[Miss_Purl_McKnittington]

A way around the awkward double-citing in a sentence would be to break it down into two sentences. Then you have:

We learn at the beginning of Douglass’ first autobiography that his mother’s name was Harriet Bailey (Douglass, Narrative, 1). In his second memoir, however, he talks first about his grandparents (Douglass, Bondage, 3).

It’s more elegant that way, I think, because the parenthetical cites don’t inhibit the flow as much. The only thing I have a quibble with that you’re not supposed to use commas in parenthetical citation in MLA. My writer’s handbook, however, gives this comforting advice that gets around that.

@Rules for Writers (Fifth Edition)

TWO OR MORE TITLES BY THE SAME AUTHOR

If your list of works cited includes two or more titles by the same author, mention the title of the work in the signal phrase or include a short version of the title in the parentheses. <example omitted> Titles of articles and other short works are placed in quotation marks, as in the example just given.

In the rare case when both the author’s name and a short title must be given in parentheses, separate them with a comma.

So, that means that mhendo’s example would read:

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Douglass tells us immediately that his mother’s name was Harriet Bailey (1). In his second memoir, My Bondage and My Freedom, however, he talks first of his grandparents (3).

Although, for information as general as the second sentence, I probably wouldn’t cite it at all, since you’re not drawing a specific fact or quote about his grandparents out of the text. The information provided just isn’t specific enough. (Hopefully, in a situation like that, you’d go on in the paragraph to provide more information about his grandparents that did warrant a cite.) If you gave his grandparents’ names or a specific quote, then I would cite it.

On preview, I’ve been beaten soundly to it, but I’m posting anyway because this took a while to type.

[mhendo]

@Miss Purl McKnittington

A way around the awkward double-citing in a sentence would be to break it down into two sentences.

Well, as i suggested, my example wasn’t designed to be a model of lucid writing. It was designed merely to demonstrate the use of short titles when citing different works by the same author.

[Miss_Purl_McKnittington]

Oh, I’m not criticizing your example, mhendo. So sorry if it appeared that way! I’ve just been editing a lot of my peers’ papers lately and have been quietly horrified by abuses of the English language. Your example by no means triggered that horror.

[Speaker_for_the_Dead]

What. Abuses of English, they doesn’t happen. I can’t believe; you would say that. English is: the easiest language out there. I find it. Very easy.