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Where Does the Period Go? Punctuation Rules for In-Text Citations

Most citation errors that survive a spell-check are punctuation errors: a period before the parenthesis, a comma missing after an APA author, a Chicago note number stranded before a comma. The rules are small and they are fixed. This guide sets them out for APA 7 quotations, MLA 9 in-text citations, and Chicago 18 notes and author-date citations, with the British-versus-American quotation-mark question, question marks and exclamation points, semicolons between sources, page abbreviations, and the ampersand settled along the way. For what goes inside the parentheses, see the APA, MLA, and Chicago in-text guides.

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Quick Answer: the citation goes inside the sentence, so the period goes after it

A parenthetical citation belongs to the sentence it documents, so it sits before the sentence's final period. When the sentence ends with a quotation, the order is closing quotation mark, then citation, then period. A block quotation is the one exception: the citation follows the block's final punctuation and nothing follows the citation. Chicago note numbers go after the period or comma, and before a dash. Those four sentences cover almost every case; the rest of this guide is the detail.

The core patterns

APA 7, paraphrase:

Sleep loss impairs next-day recall (Ferreira, 2021).

APA 7, quotation:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88).

MLA 9, paraphrase:

Sleep loss impairs next-day recall (Ferreira 88).

MLA 9, quotation:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (Ferreira 88).

Chicago 18, note number:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night."1

Chicago 18, the note:

1. Nadia Ferreira, Attention and the Learning Brain (Halcyon Academic Press, 2021), 88.

Chicago 18, author-date:

Sleep loss impairs next-day recall (Ferreira 2021, 88).

Block quotation, all three styles:

…within a single night. (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88) — no period after the citation

Why the period goes after the citation

The citation documents the sentence, so it is part of the sentence, and the period ends the whole thing. The MLA Style Center explains the logic in its post on run-in versus block quotations: the citation refers to the quotation and belongs in the same sentence with it, so the period follows the citation. APA and Chicago author-date reason the same way. A period before the parenthesis strands the citation outside any sentence, which is why every style treats …memory. (Ferreira, 2021) as an error rather than a variant.

The same logic tells you where a mid-sentence citation goes: immediately after the material it supports, before the comma or semicolon that continues the sentence. Do not hold every citation until the end of a sentence that draws on two sources; the reader cannot tell which claim belongs to which.

Citations inside a sentence

APA 7:

Although sleep loss impairs recall (Ferreira, 2021), caffeine masks the effect for a few hours (Adeyemi & Brandt, 2019).

MLA 9:

Although sleep loss impairs recall (Ferreira 88), caffeine masks the effect for a few hours (Adeyemi and Brandt 42).

Chicago 18, notes:

Although sleep loss impairs recall,1 caffeine masks the effect for a few hours.2

Chicago 18, author-date:

Although sleep loss impairs recall (Ferreira 2021, 88), caffeine masks the effect for a few hours (Adeyemi and Brandt 2019, 42).

APA 7: quotation mark, citation, period

APA's quotation guidelines set two placements. For a parenthetical citation, close the quotation, give the author, year, and page in parentheses, and end with the period. For a narrative citation, the author and year appear in the sentence, and only the page number goes in parentheses after the closing quotation mark, before the period. Either way the quoted words carry no period of their own inside the quotation marks.

APA 7, short quotations

Parenthetical:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88).

Narrative:

Ferreira (2021) found that sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (p. 88).

Quotation in the middle of a sentence:

The claim that sleep loss "degrades working memory" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88) has been replicated twice.

Wrong (period inside, citation stranded):

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night." (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88)

Block quotations: citation after the final punctuation

A quotation of 40 words or more becomes a freestanding block, indented half an inch with no quotation marks. Because the block ends with its own punctuation, the citation follows that punctuation and takes no period after the closing parenthesis. If the author and year were named in the sentence that introduces the block, only the page number follows the block.

APA 7, block quotation

Parenthetical form:

Ferreira's summary is blunt:

      A single night of restricted sleep is enough to measurably degrade working
      memory, and the deficit does not recover after one full night of sleep. The
      effect is largest in the tasks that students most often describe as
      "cramming," which is precisely the situation in which they sleep least.
      (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88)

Narrative form, page only after the block:

Ferreira (2021) summarised the evidence: [block quotation] …sleep least. (p. 88)

Question marks and exclamation points

APA places periods and commas inside closing quotation marks in ordinary prose, but a question mark or exclamation point stays inside only when it belongs to the quoted material. When it does, keep it inside the quotation marks, add the citation, and still end your sentence with a period. When the question is yours, the quotation has no mark inside; the citation follows the closing quotation mark and your question mark follows the citation.

APA 7, questions and exclamations

The quotation is a question:

Participants kept asking, "Why does one night matter?" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 90).

Your sentence is the question:

Is it plausible that one night "degrades working memory" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88)?

Exclamation inside the quotation:

One student wrote, "I will never cram again!" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 91).

Commas, the ampersand, and page abbreviations

APA separates every element inside the parentheses with commas: author, year, locator. Two authors are joined by an ampersand inside parentheses and in the reference list, and by the word and in running text. Locators use p. for one page, pp. for a range or a set of pages, para. and paras. for numbered paragraphs, and plain labels for other parts (Chapter 3, Table 2, Slide 4, the "Discussion" section, 2:15 for a timestamp). Page ranges take an en dash. The author-date basics page carries the full list.

APA 7, what goes between the commas

Two authors, parenthetical:

(Adeyemi & Brandt, 2019, p. 42)

Two authors, narrative:

Adeyemi and Brandt (2019) reported the effect (p. 42).

Three or more authors:

(Osei et al., 2022, pp. 14–16)

Discontinuous pages:

(Ferreira, 2021, pp. 88, 102)

Numbered paragraphs, no pages:

(Northwind Energy Institute, 2023, para. 4) or (Northwind Energy Institute, 2023, paras. 4–5)

Section heading, no pages or paragraph numbers:

(Northwind Energy Institute, 2023, "Methods" section)

Timestamp:

(Kettering Science Lab, 2022, 2:15)

MLA 9: the same placement, fewer commas

MLA's placement rules match APA's: the citation follows the closing quotation mark and precedes the period, a block quotation's citation follows the final punctuation with nothing after it, and a narrative citation leaves only the page in parentheses. The Style Center's in-text overview points to §6.43 of the ninth-edition Handbook for placement. What differs is the inside of the parentheses: no comma between the author and the page, no year, and no p.

MLA 9, short quotations

Parenthetical:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (Ferreira 88).

Narrative:

Ferreira finds that sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (88).

Two works by the same author, comma before the title:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (Ferreira, Attention 88).

No author, shortened title:

The report calls the deficit "cumulative" ("Sleep and Study" 3).

Block quotations in MLA

Prose that runs more than four lines in your paper, or verse of more than three lines, is set as a block, indented half an inch with no quotation marks. The citation follows the block's final period, and no period follows the citation. The Style Center's post on the logic of block-quotation punctuation explains why: a block is not inserted in the middle of your sentence, so there is no sentence for the citation to close.

MLA 9, block quotation

Ferreira's summary is blunt:

      A single night of restricted sleep is enough to measurably degrade working
      memory, and the deficit does not recover after one full night of sleep. The
      effect is largest in the tasks that students most often describe as
      "cramming," which is precisely the situation in which they sleep least. (88)

Question marks in MLA

MLA's rule matches APA's and adds one refinement. When the quotation ends with a question mark or exclamation point, keep it inside the quotation marks, add the citation, and end with a period. When your own sentence is a question that quotes a question, the Style Center's post on punctuating questions says not to use two question marks: without a citation, keep only the one inside the quotation; with a citation, drop the mark inside the quotation and put a single question mark after the citation.

MLA 9, questions

The quotation is a question:

Participants kept asking, "Why does one night matter?" (Ferreira 90).

Your sentence is the question:

Is it plausible that one night "degrades working memory" (Ferreira 88)?

A question quoting a question, with a citation:

How would you answer Ferreira's question, "Why does one night matter" (90)?

Locators without p.

MLA gives page numbers bare: (Ferreira 88), (Ferreira 88–89). When a source has no page numbers but does have numbered paragraphs, sections, or chapters, MLA uses par., pars., sec., and ch. after a comma: (Northwind Energy Institute, par. 4). Verse takes line or lines spelled out on first use. A source with no numbering of any kind takes the author alone; do not count paragraphs yourself. Time-based media take the time as it displays: (Kettering Science Lab 00:02:15–00:02:40).

Chicago 18: note numbers after the punctuation

Chicago's notes-bibliography system replaces the parenthetical with a superscript number, and the number has its own placement rule: it follows any mark of punctuation, including the period, the comma, and the closing quotation mark, and it also follows a closing parenthesis. The one exception is the dash, which the number precedes. The number normally goes at the end of the sentence or clause the note documents, not right after the author's name. This rule is the same in CMOS 17 and CMOS 18; the Notes-Bibliography guide shows the note formats it points to.

Chicago 18, placing the note number

After the period:

Sleep loss impairs next-day recall.1

After the closing quotation mark and its period:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night."2

After a comma, mid-sentence:

Although sleep loss impairs recall,3 caffeine masks the effect for a few hours.4

Before a dash:

The deficit is cumulative5—and it survives a full night of recovery sleep.

After a closing parenthesis:

The effect was largest in the cramming condition (the one students reported most often).6

Wrong (number before the punctuation):

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night2."

Note that Chicago, unlike APA and MLA, keeps the period inside the closing quotation mark when a note number follows, because the number is not part of the sentence's punctuation. Chicago also follows the American convention for periods and commas inside quotation marks in ordinary prose, which is why the quotation in the second example ends night." and not night".

Inside the note

The note itself is punctuated like a sentence: a number and a period, elements separated by commas, publication details in parentheses, the page number after a comma, and a final period. Shortened notes drop the publication details. Two or more sources in one note are separated by semicolons. Page numbers appear bare, without p.; use chap., sec., or par. only when a source lacks pages.

Chicago 18, notes

Full note:

1. Nadia Ferreira, Attention and the Learning Brain (Halcyon Academic Press, 2021), 88.

Shortened note:

2. Ferreira, Attention, 90.

Two sources in one note:

3. Folake Adeyemi and Sven Brandt, "Caffeine, Sleep Debt, and Recall in Undergraduates," Journal of Cognitive Learning 8, no. 3 (2019): 42; Ferreira, Attention, 88.

Page range:

4. Ferreira, Attention, 88–89.

Author-date: a space, then a comma

Chicago author-date citations sit where APA's do and end the sentence the same way. Inside the parentheses, there is no comma between the author and the year, and a comma introduces the page. Two authors are joined by and, never an ampersand. Multiple sources are separated by semicolons; the CMOS Q&A on citing two sources in one sentence says to combine them in one parenthetical with a semicolon rather than stacking two parentheticals. The Author-Date guide has the reference-list side.

Chicago 18, author-date

Paraphrase:

Sleep loss impairs next-day recall (Ferreira 2021, 88).

Quotation:

Sleep loss "degrades working memory within a single night" (Ferreira 2021, 88).

Two authors:

(Adeyemi and Brandt 2019, 42)

Two sources:

(Adeyemi and Brandt 2019; Ferreira 2021)

Block quotation:

…sleep least. (Ferreira 2021, 88)

Semicolons between multiple sources

All three styles use a semicolon between sources inside one parenthetical or one note. They differ on order. APA arranges the sources alphabetically, in the same order they appear in the reference list, and separates two works by the same author with commas after a single name. MLA and Chicago allow any order that makes sense, usually alphabetical or chronological; keep it consistent.

Multiple sources in one citation

APA 7:

(Adeyemi & Brandt, 2019; Ferreira, 2021; Osei et al., 2022)

APA 7, same author, two years:

(Ferreira, 2018, 2021)

MLA 9:

(Adeyemi and Brandt 42; Ferreira 88; Osei et al. 14)

Chicago 18, author-date:

(Adeyemi and Brandt 2019, 42; Ferreira 2021, 88)

Chicago 18, one note:

5. Adeyemi and Brandt, "Caffeine," 42; Ferreira, Attention, 88.

British and American quotation marks

APA, MLA, and Chicago all follow American convention: double quotation marks for a quotation, single marks for a quotation inside it, and periods and commas inside the closing mark when no citation intervenes. British convention, common in UK Harvard variants and Oxford-style house guides, reverses the marks and places the period outside unless it belongs to the quoted words. The citation's position does not move: in both conventions the order is closing quotation mark, citation, period. Only the marks and the comma placement in ordinary prose change. If you are writing in a UK style, follow your institution's guide for the marks and use the Harvard hub for the parenthetical; if you are converting a draft between conventions, the quotation mark converter swaps single and double marks in one pass.

American convention (APA, MLA, Chicago)

No citation:

Ferreira calls the deficit "cumulative."

With a citation:

Ferreira calls the deficit "cumulative" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88).

Quotation inside a quotation:

Ferreira notes that students "describe the task as 'cramming' without irony" (p. 88).

British convention (UK Harvard and house styles)

No citation:

Ferreira calls the deficit 'cumulative'.

With a citation:

Ferreira calls the deficit 'cumulative' (Ferreira 2021, p. 88).

Quotation inside a quotation:

Ferreira notes that students 'describe the task as "cramming" without irony' (p. 88).

Quick comparison

Punctuation around and inside an in-text citation.
RuleAPA 7MLA 9Chicago 18
Period and citationCitation, then periodCitation, then periodNote number after the period; author-date: citation, then period
Closing quotation markMark, citation, periodMark, citation, periodPeriod inside the mark, then the note number
Block quotationCitation after final punctuation, no period afterSameSame for author-date; note number after final punctuation
Quoted question"…?" (Author, Year, p. X)."…?" (Author X)."…?"1
Inside the parenthesesAuthor, Year, p. X — commasAuthor X — no comma, no yearAuthor Year, X — space, then comma
Two authors& in parentheses, and in proseandand
Multiple sourcesSemicolons, alphabeticalSemicolonsSemicolons in a note or parenthetical
Page abbreviationp. / pp.NoneNone
Paragraph abbreviationpara. / paras.par. / pars. after a commapar. / pars.
DashCitation before the dash if it documents the first clauseSameNote number before the dash

Common mistakes

  • Putting the period inside the closing quotation mark and then adding the citation. The citation is stranded outside the sentence.
  • Adding a period after a block-quotation citation. The block's own punctuation already closed it.
  • Writing (Ferreira 2021, p. 88) in APA or (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88) in Chicago author-date. APA wants the comma after the author; Chicago wants a space.
  • Writing p. in an MLA or Chicago page reference. Both give the number bare.
  • Using & in a narrative APA citation or anywhere in MLA and Chicago.
  • Placing a Chicago note number before a comma or period, or after a dash.
  • Stacking two parentheticals at the end of one sentence. Combine them with a semicolon, or move one to the clause it supports.
  • Doubling the question mark when your question quotes a question. Keep one.
  • Counting unnumbered paragraphs to invent a para. locator. Use a section heading in APA, or the author alone in MLA.
  • Mixing British and American conventions in one paper. Choose the one your style or institution prescribes and apply it throughout.

Frequently asked questions

Does the period go before or after the in-text citation?
After it. In APA, MLA, and Chicago author-date, the parenthetical citation is part of the sentence it documents, so the sentence's period follows the closing parenthesis. The only exception is a block quotation, where the citation follows the block's final punctuation and no period follows the citation.
Where does the citation go when the sentence ends with a quotation?
Closing quotation mark, then the citation, then the period: "within a single night" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88). in APA, and (Ferreira 88). in MLA. Do not put a period inside the quotation marks. In Chicago's notes system the period stays inside the quotation mark and the superscript note number follows it.
What if the quotation ends with a question mark or exclamation point?
Keep the mark inside the quotation marks because it belongs to the quoted words, add the citation, and end your sentence with a period: "Why does one night matter?" (Ferreira, 2021, p. 90). If the question is yours rather than the source's, the quotation carries no mark inside and your question mark comes after the citation.
Is there a comma between the author and the page number?
In APA, yes, with the year in between: (Ferreira, 2021, p. 88). In MLA, no: (Ferreira 88), though a comma separates the author from a shortened title when you cite two works by the same author. In Chicago author-date, a space separates the author and year and a comma introduces the page: (Ferreira 2021, 88).
Where does a Chicago footnote number go?
After the punctuation: after the period, the comma, the closing quotation mark, or the closing parenthesis. The only mark it precedes is a dash. Place it at the end of the sentence or clause the note supports rather than beside the author's name. CMOS 18 keeps this rule unchanged from CMOS 17.
How do I cite more than one source in the same parentheses?
Separate the sources with semicolons inside a single set of parentheses: (Adeyemi & Brandt, 2019; Ferreira, 2021) in APA, (Adeyemi and Brandt 42; Ferreira 88) in MLA, and (Adeyemi and Brandt 2019; Ferreira 2021) in Chicago author-date. APA orders them alphabetically to match the reference list. In a Chicago note, list the sources in one note separated by semicolons.
When do I use p., pp., and para.?
Only in APA. Use p. for a single page, pp. for a range or several pages, and para. or paras. for numbered paragraphs in a source without pages. MLA and Chicago give page numbers bare and use par. or pars. only when a source numbers its paragraphs.
Ampersand or and?
APA uses an ampersand inside parentheses and in the reference list, and the word and in running text: (Adeyemi & Brandt, 2019) but Adeyemi and Brandt (2019). MLA and Chicago use and everywhere and never the ampersand.

Check the punctuation before you submit

The in-text generator writes the parenthetical with the right commas, ampersand, and page abbreviation for your style; the block-quote formatter sets a long quotation off with the citation after the final punctuation; and the citation checker flags stray periods and missing commas across a whole draft.

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