Question

In MLA, if you reference a passage of a novel that contains dialog and the dialog that you are referencing ends in a period, do you leave it? Here is the passage from my paper that I am talking about:

When offering someone extra food to a family member, one would receive, “no answer other than ‘Thank You. I have enough.’” (Kafka 34) and that would be the end of it.

Thank you for helping me!

Answer 1

"no answer other than 'Thank you. I have enough" (Kafka 34).

Answer 2

Ok, but then what do I do with the rest of the sentence? does that require me to delete "and that would be the end of it."?

Answer 3

If that is not the end of the sentence than continue on and place the credit at the end of that sentence.

Answer 4

The passage from my paper was intended to be one sentence, if that's what you mean. Normally, I would simply remove the period from within the quote (as the sentence already has a period), but then I would be removing punctuation from the dialog.

On another note, does leaving the citation where it is signify that the sentence ends directly after it meaning that I would need to move it to the end of the sentence?

Answer 5

Yes, you would be removing the punctuation from the dialogue because these are someone's words and need to be recognized as someone, other than your own, voice. Citations always come at the end of the sentence in which the quotes were used in.

Answer 6

Ok, so no period coma or semicolon will ever directly preceded a closing quotation mark.

Now, the only reason why I am confused about if I am allowed to continue my sentence after citing the quotation is because of the first example here:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/

Answer 7

I'm sorry, you're correct that you may place the parenthesis where the quote ends.

Answer 8

Just to be sure, the below sentence is up to MLA standards?

When offering someone extra food to a family member, one would receive, “no answer other than ‘Thank You. I have enough’” (Kafka 34) and that would be the end of it.