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How would you parenthetically cite an author that appears twice in a works cited page? I would like to cite Wachs. Here is a piece of my works cited:

Wachs, Juan, Helman Stern, Yael Edan, Michael Gillam, Craig Feied, Mark Smith, and Jon Handler. Gestix: A Doctor-Computer Sterile Gesture Interface for Dynamic Environments. Tech. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Wachs, Juan, Yu-Ting Li, and Mithun Jacob. "Gestonurse." Gestonurse. Purdue University Industrial Engineering Lab., 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Assuming that I would like to parenthetically cite the second source, how would I go about doing this to differentiate from the first source?

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In the future, Writers is probably the right place to ask questions like this. (See also meta.english.stackexchange.com/a/1423/13812.) – zpletan Apr 30 '12 at 4:19
For the benefit of writersSE, this post may be migrated there. Voting to close as off-topic. – Kris Apr 30 '12 at 6:13

2 Answers

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According to the Purdue Online Writing Lab, when using the MLA format you would distinguish multiple works by the same author by including a shortened version of the title of the particular reference that you are citing. Thus your examples might appear as follows (where 'p.' indicates the page number/s, which should also be included):

(Wachs, Gestix p.)

and

(Wachs, Gestonurse p.)

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Thank you so much! I greatly appreciate the time and effort! – user1299661 Apr 30 '12 at 3:02
Glad you liked it! The other answer (and comments) is perfectly valid but (as far as I can tell) not standard for MLA. I myself prefer author-year (eg Smith 2001b), but that's Harvard system. – Gaston Ümlaut Apr 30 '12 at 7:53
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Another idea is to number your references. Then you can just have Wachs[1] versus Wachs[2], and in the references:

  1. Wachs, Juan, Helman Stern, Yael Edan, Michael Gillam, Craig Feied, Mark Smith, and Jon Handler. Gestix: A Doctor-Computer Sterile Gesture Interface for Dynamic Environments. Tech. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

  2. Wachs, Juan, Yu-Ting Li, and Mithun Jacob. "Gestonurse." Gestonurse. Purdue University Industrial Engineering Lab., 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Of course these two could actually be 13 and 14 or whatever.

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Thank you so much-- I wish I could accept two answers! – user1299661 Apr 30 '12 at 3:02
That's okay. P.S. there are other schemes. One is to use years, like Smith [1983] and Smith [1989]. This is good if you're doing citations manually: the years are not moving targets in any way. If you insert something, there is no renumbering. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out very well here because your little ego-maniac published two things on the same date. :) – Kaz Apr 30 '12 at 4:13
Then use year and serial#. – Kris Apr 30 '12 at 6:17

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