Locator
The precise place in a source that lets a reader find the quoted passage.
A locator is the part of a citation that points to the exact spot in a source where a quotation can be found. In print it is usually a page number or a page range; in manuscripts it can be a folio, column, or line; in audio and video it is a timestamp.
Without a locator, a citation is a promise with no address. A reader can find the book, but not the sentence. This is why footnotes and bibliographies include locators, and why web citations need paragraph numbers or stable anchors when pages are not fixed.
Locators have their own conventions. MLA uses the abbreviation 'p.' or 'pp.' for page, Chicago often omits the abbreviation in notes, and legal citation uses paragraph and section symbols. Timestamps are usually written as minutes:seconds, sometimes with hours for long media.
Common mistake: giving only a chapter or a URL for a quotation. A chapter is a search zone, not a location; a URL without an anchor is a building, not a room.
“Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 195.”
Keep reading the glossary
A formal reference that lets a reader locate the source of a quote.
A note printed at the bottom of a page giving a citation, a qualification, or a small side-comment.
A citation that points to the exact page, paragraph, or section where a quoted or paraphrased passage appears.
The date you actually read an online source, recorded because online sources change.