How do you cite a YouTube video parenthetically?

Answered By: Kathryn Park

Last Updated: Jul 31, 2019 Views: 69047

When citing parenthetically, you always have to start with the citation at the end of your paper where you cite all your sources, and the parenthetical citation is a just a reference to the citation at the end of your paper.

MLA does not have a specific recommendation for YouTube videos, so the standard is to use the format for online film or video. Here are the basics:

Author’s Name or Poster’s Username. “Title of Video.” Online video clip. Name of Website. Name of Website’s Publisher, date of posting. Web. date retrieved.

Citation Example (without the double spaced, hanging indent Times new Roman 12" formatting):

Shimabukuro, Jake. "Ukulele Weeps by Jake Shimabukuro." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 22 Apr. 2006. Web. 9 Sept. 2010.

Parenthetical or in text citation example:

(Shimabukuro, 2006)

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Comments (4)

There shouldn't be a comma between creator and year, right?

Also, I've seen the documentation that if quoting from a film and there's a running time to put the running time in parenthesis.

Finally, if a person wants to quote what someone is saying in a film or video and would you put the creator of the film or video and year in parenthesis or the name of the person you're quoting and the year in parenthesis?

Confused,
Susan

by Susan on Mar 23, 2018
Hello Susan. It all makes more sense if you remember:

1) The main function of the works cited page is so that a reader may identify the sources that you used in your paper.

2) A parenthetical (or in text) citation merely refers your reader to your works cited page. For the in text citation you'd use the first element from your works cited page citation to identify which source the quote came from.

Per MLA, your in text citation should contain the first word listed from the citation on your works cited page. https://style.mla.org/in-text-citation-film/

Here are examples that they give:

Works cited cited citation: Nikita. Directed by Luc Besson, Gaumont / Les Films du Loup, 1990.

In text citation: Luc Besson (Nikita) and John Badham (Point) approach the figure of the femme fatale differently in their films.

You can see that all that was used was the first word of the citation. If you are quoting from the film MLA has said that you should give a time stamp (of when the quote appears in the film). https://style.mla.org/time-stamps-for-videos/

So an example would be "until the women of Pawnee are judged, not by the flatness of their tummies, but by the contents of their brains" (Beauty Pageant, 5:07)

by Kathryn Park on Mar 24, 2018
If the youtube video is an hour long, how do I cite only a segment of it?

by John Marquez on Nov 27, 2019
Hi John. MLA does not have a specific recommendation for citing a portion of a video. You should cite as you normally would for the whole video. If your instructor has requested you could use the order followed by a book chapter, but instead of the page numbers at the end of the citation you could include the beginning and ending time stamp on the video like the book chapter example below format the MLA website.

Balibar, Étienne. “On Reproduction.” Reading Capital, by Louis Althusser and Balibar, translated by Ben Brewster, Verso, 2009, pp. 285-305.

by Kathryn Park on Dec 03, 2019