The whole point of an MLA in-text citation is to lead your reader to the full entry in your Works Cited page. That’s it. Not to prove you can count pages. When you’re quoting or paraphrasing a web article, a YouTube video, a podcast, or even a PDF that lacks pagination, you simply skip the page number. I know, it sounds too easy, but the official MLA handbook says so. It’s like being told you don’t have to wear a tie to the party—you’ll still look good, I promise.
What Do You Use Instead? (The Cool Substitute)
Without a page number, you lean on the author’s last name. That’s your new best friend. So, instead of writing (Smith 23), you write just (Smith). If there’s no author at all—and this happens more often than you’d think on blogs or company websites—you use a shortened version of the title of the work. For example, if the article is called “10 Ways to Survive a Squirrel Uprising,” you’d write (“Squirrel Uprising”). It feels weirdly minimalist, but it works.
But wait—there’s a bonus trick. If you mention the author’s name directly in your sentence, you don’t need a parenthetical citation at all. Like this: Jones argues that procrastination is actually a form of time travel. No parentheses, no number. Just a clean, smug sentence. I love doing this because it makes me feel like a clever writer who’s above the rules.
