When refering to a claim written in a book, how do you refer to it if there are two authors?

Question

When analyzing a piece of writing, I was taught to refer to claims made by using the author's last name. For example if Donald Duck wrote the book "How to Build Boats" and I was analyzing it, I would write "According to Duck, a hammer and nails is necessary for building a boat". What if there is more than one author and it's not clear which is responsible for any given sentence? How would then? Also how would parenthetical references look? For example if the book was written by Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and I wanted to quote "boats need water to float" would it look like this: > As has been observed countless times "boats need water to float" and this would be problematic in dry desserts (Duck, Mouse). I was also taught it's bad to refer to "the paper" or the book itself since technically it's an inanimate object that is not making the claim, the authors are. For example it's bad to say > The book argues water is necessary for a boat to float Come to think of it I guess the rule in context dependent, for example in an instruction manual wouldn't you say "the book explains how to assemble the chair" but in an analysis of the film *Blade Runner* you would say "Thomson argues that the character Roy Batty has a general disrespects for eyes" instead of "The paper argues that the character Roy Batty has a general disrespect for eyes"?

Answer 1

You should always refer to the two authors together, so your example is nearly correct. The in-text citation (for MLA) would be: "Boats need water to float" (Duck and Mouse 101). Provided 101 is the page number.

You are also correct that, in most cases, you will want to refer to the author and not the book. So you could say: In Boats are Fun, Duck and Mouse argue that water is necessary for a boat to float (101). These rules apply to sources with known authors. There are times when you would refer directly to the source rather than an author, for example, when quoting a definition from the OED you would use a different set of rules for both the in-text citation and the Works Cited entry.