Footnotes
It's easy to add footnotes to your paper to give it a professional look. In the following example "Wolfe" is the author's last name, "1979" is the year, and "23" is the page number.
1. Wolfe 1979:23.
Bibliography
In this bibliographic entry, the book title is in italics. "Bantam" is the publisher. This info is on the copyright page of the book; and it's also almost always available online.
Wolfe, Tom
1979. The Right Stuff. New York: Bantam.
MLA-style in-text references
The MLA in-text reference style allows you to cite a source by simply supplying the author's name and page number in parentheses in the text of your essay. The advantage of using this style is you don't need a footnote. The disadvantage (which writers of style manuals often fail to mention) is that it severely limits your ability to present tangential material or parenthetical comments.
As I have noted earlier in this essay, they were all called "Merry Pranksters." (Wolfe 23). Truman Capote also referred to them as "bandits" (42).
In the above example the reference to page 42 does not include Capote's name since it was mentioned in the text. If you use in-text MLA-style references instead of footnotes, you still need a bibliography or "Works Cited" page at the end of your essay. For more info see this explanation of MLA style in-text citations.