Qtd. in MLA: How to Cite a Source Quoted in Another Source

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Published July 4, 2026

You are reading an article, and the article quotes someone else — a poet, an expert interviewed by the journalist, a researcher from a book you cannot get. You want those quoted words in your paper, but you never read the original. MLA calls this an indirect source, and its machinery for it is the abbreviation “qtd. in.” This guide covers what goes in the parenthetical, what goes in the Works Cited (only one of the two sources — students routinely pick the wrong one), and how MLA’s rule differs from APA’s “as cited in.”

The shortest answer: put “qtd. in” before the source you actually consulted in the parenthetical citation — (qtd. in Weisman 259) — and name the original speaker in your prose. The Works Cited lists only the source you read, never the original. If you can reasonably get the original source, cite that instead.

What “qtd. in” means

”Qtd. in” abbreviates “quoted in.” It tells your reader: the words inside my quotation marks belong to one person, but I found them in a work by someone else, and that second work is what my citation points to. Purdue OWL’s summary of the MLA Handbook rule is direct: “put the abbreviation qtd. in (‘quoted in’) before the indirect source you cite in your parenthetical reference.”

The classic example, from Purdue OWL:

Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as “social service centers, and they don’t do that well” (qtd. in Weisman 259).

Read the anatomy of that sentence. Ravitch said the words, so Ravitch is named in the prose. Weisman wrote the book the student actually read, so Weisman, with the page number, sits after “qtd. in.” The name after “qtd. in” is always the source you consulted, never the original speaker.

The abbreviation itself is fussy in exactly one way: it is lowercase “qtd. in,” with a period after “qtd” and none after “in.” Not “Qtd. In,” not “qtd in,” not “quoted in” spelled out.

MLA in-text citation with qtd. in

The pattern is: qtd. in + last name of the source you consulted + page number. But where does the original author’s name go? The MLA Style Center’s post “Where should the original author’s name appear when citing indirect sources?” (20 Sept. 2023) gives three sanctioned placements. Its running example quotes Alexander Pope from a book by Leopold Damrosch.

In the prose — the default, and the clearest:

According to Alexander Pope, “A little learning is a dang’rous thing” (qtd. in Damrosch 239).

In the citation — when naming the original author in the sentence would be awkward:

As a wise poet once wrote, “A little learning is a dang’rous thing” (Alexander Pope qtd. in Damrosch 239).

In an endnote — when you want the sentence and parenthetical both uncluttered, the note reads:

Alexander Pope qtd. in Damrosch 239.

Whichever placement you choose, the original author must be identified somewhere. A bare (qtd. in Damrosch 239) after a quotation whose speaker is never named leaves the reader unable to tell who is talking.

One more flexibility from the same MLA Style Center post: “If your discussion makes clear that the quotation is from an indirect source, then the abbreviation ‘qtd. in’ isn’t needed.” If your sentence already says “In a letter reproduced in Damrosch’s biography, Pope wrote…,” the parenthetical can be plain (Damrosch 239) — the prose has done the abbreviation’s job. The general rules for parentheticals — no comma before the page number, no “p.” — are covered in our in-text citations guide.

Which source goes in the Works Cited

Only the source you consulted. This is the step students get wrong most often, so it is worth stating in both directions: the source you read gets a normal entry; the original author gets no entry at all.

For the Pope example, the MLA Style Center’s works-cited entry is for Damrosch’s book alone:

Damrosch, Leopold, Jr. The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope. U of California P, 1987.

Pope appears nowhere on the Works Cited page — and never will, unless you read Pope directly, at which point you would cite Pope and drop “qtd. in” entirely.

A second official example confirms the pattern for articles. The MLA Style Center’s post “How do I cite a poem quoted in a journal article?” (22 Nov. 2019) quotes a poem found inside a PMLA article by Jamison Kantor. The in-text citation is (qtd. in Kantor 508), with the prose making clear who is being quoted, and the works-cited entry is for the article only:

Kantor, Jamison. “Immortality, Romanticism, and the Limit of the Liberal Imagination.” PMLA, vol. 133, no. 3, 2018, pp. 508–25.

The entry follows the ordinary rules for its source type — nothing about it signals “indirect.” All the indirectness lives in the in-text citation. If your consulted source is a website, format it as a website citation; if it is a book, as a book. MLA also permits documenting the original source’s full publication details in an endnote when the original matters to your argument but you could not obtain it.

Quotation or paraphrase?

”Qtd. in” is for quotations — material your source itself presents inside quotation marks. The MLA Handbook’s wording is “if what you quote or paraphrase is itself a quotation.” Two consequences follow:

You can paraphrase the quoted words and still use qtd. in. If Damrosch quotes Pope and you restate Pope’s point in your own words, the material is still “itself a quotation” in your source, so (qtd. in Damrosch 239) remains correct.

If your source only paraphrased the original, drop qtd. in. When Weisman summarizes Ravitch’s position without quoting her, there is no quotation to be “quoted in.” Attribute the idea to Ravitch in your prose — “Weisman reports that Ravitch considers…” — and cite Weisman normally: (Weisman 259).

The dividing line is what appears in the source you read: quotation marks around the original’s words mean qtd. in applies; a summary means it does not.

Common indirect-source situations

Someone quoted in a news article. The most frequent real case: a journalist interviews an expert, and you want the expert’s words. The article is your source, so the journalist gets the works-cited entry; the person quoted is named in your prose. The example that library guides use: “According to a study by Smith, 42% of doctors would refuse to perform legal euthanasia (qtd. in Kirkey).” If the person spoke to you directly rather than to a journalist, that is a different situation — see how to cite an interview.

No page number. Websites and most online news articles have no pages, so the parenthetical is simply (qtd. in Smith). Do not invent a locator. If the consulted source also has no named author, the short title moves into the slot instead — the mechanics are in our MLA citation with no author guide.

The original speaker is unnamed. If your source quotes “one senior official” without a name, you cannot conjure one. Attribute generically in your prose — “one official quoted by Weisman warned that…” — and cite the consulted source normally.

A quote within a quote on the page. When the quotation you reproduce itself contains quoted words, the inner quotation takes single quotation marks inside your double ones: “Pope’s ‘little learning’ line is the most misquoted in English.” That is punctuation, not citation — the parenthetical still follows the qtd. in rules above. More on integrating quotations in how to cite a quote.

Quotation websites. BrainyQuote and its cousins are indirect sources of the least reliable kind — the MLA Style Center has a dedicated post advising you to track down where the person actually said the words and cite that. Famous quotations are misattributed constantly; treat a quotation site as a starting point for a search, not a source.

When to avoid qtd. in altogether. Purdue OWL, relaying the Handbook: “In most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.” If the original is a library search away, read it and cite it directly. Reserve qtd. in for genuinely unreachable originals — out-of-print books, private letters, interviews that exist only inside the article that printed them.

Qtd. in vs. as cited in: MLA vs APA

The two big styles handle indirect sources with different wording, and mixing them is a recognizable error. Four contrasts matter:

In APA 7, you “identify the primary source and write ‘as cited in’ the secondary source that you used” — narrative form Rabbitt (1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014), or without the year if it is unknown: (Rabbitt, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014). Like MLA, APA lists only the consulted source in the reference list, and APA is explicit that the device is for sparing use — when the original is “out of print, unavailable, or available only in a language that you do not understand.” For the broader differences between the styles, see MLA vs APA.

Common mistakes

Putting the original author in the Works Cited. The consulted source is the only works-cited entry. Listing Pope alongside (or instead of) Damrosch claims you read a source you did not read.

Reversing the citation. (qtd. in Pope 239) is backwards — the name after “qtd. in” must be the source you read, not the person who said the words. If Pope’s name is in the parenthetical at all, it goes before the abbreviation: (Alexander Pope qtd. in Damrosch 239).

Writing “as cited in” in an MLA paper. That is APA’s construction. In MLA it is “qtd. in,” every time.

Using qtd. in when you actually read the original. If you found the quotation in an article but then went and read the original source, cite the original directly. The abbreviation is for sources you could not consult, not a badge of extra diligence.

Misformatting the abbreviation. It is lowercase “qtd. in” — period after “qtd,” none after “in.” “Qtd. In,” “qtd in,” and “QTD in” all read as errors.

Never naming the original author. A quotation followed by (qtd. in Damrosch 239) with no attribution anywhere leaves the reader guessing who spoke. Put the original author in the prose, in the citation, or in a note — one of the three, always.

The full works-cited mechanics for whatever source you consulted — hanging indents, containers, ordering — are in the main MLA format guide, and the citation generator on the homepage builds the consulted source’s entry from a pasted URL.

The principle under all of it: cite what you read, credit who spoke. “Qtd. in” exists so you can do both honestly in one parenthetical — and the moment you can read the original yourself, you no longer need it.

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