SMARTHINKING Writer's Handbook

Chapter 3, Lesson 15: Section 1

Documentation: MLA Style

College-level writing offers certain rules and guidelines to help students find the pattern of good writing. Those rules can differ from one course to another, but most programs ask students to follow a formatting style like MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian. You will probably be asked to use the Modern Language Association (MLA) formatting style when you write papers for English courses or courses in the Humanities. If you are not sure whether you should use this format, check with your instructor.

MLA style guidelines cover two basic areas: document format and citation format. Document format specifies issues such as margins, spacing, and formatting of page numbers. Citation format covers how to give credit to your sources any time that you summarize, paraphrase, or quote information that came from someone else.

The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th edition, copyright 2009) is available widely for purchase both online and in-store. Both this book and the bigger MLA Style Handbook are also available in most libraries' reference sections. Ask your reference librarian to help you find them. If you are taking a composition class or even a literature class, your textbook may have a section on MLA format as well.

Every citation style has its own particular rules and guidelines. In this lesson, we will review rules for use of MLA documentation, specifically:

• MLA format
• Citation format
• Common mistakes in MLA formatting
• Formatting the Works Cited page
• In-text (parenthetical) citations

First Page Format

Unless your instructor has specifically asked for one, do not use a title page. Instead, at the top left of your first page type the following:

Your full name

Your instructor's name

The course number and title

The current date

Each should appear on its own line, and the lines should be double-spaced. On the next line (double-spaced), center your title. Do not place your own title in italics or quotation marks. If your title contains the names of other works, use appropriate punctuation (italics, quotation marks, etc.) for the other work(s).

Headers and Page Numbers

Every page except the first page of your paper should have a header at the top right corner, one-half inch from the top edge of the paper. This header should contain your last name followed by a space and then the page number. Sometimes professors want page numbers on the first page, too, so you will want to check with your instructor to see where you should place your page numbers. Regardless of where they begin, page numbers continue through the Works Cited page.

Spacing and Indentations

Double-space the lines throughout your paper, but do not use the "Enter" key to double-space! It will make a mess of things when you add or change something in the paper. Set your margins at one inch on all sides, and prepare two tab settings: one for paragraph indentation (one-half inch) and another one for indented quotations (one inch).

Format of Source Titles

When you include a title of a short work like a newspaper or magazine article, an article on a website, a chapter in a book, a poem from a collection of poetry, an episode of a television show, or a song off a CD either in your text or on your Works Cited page, you should encase it in quotation marks.

Note: When a comma or a period appears next to quotation marks, put it inside the quotation marks like this: "Over the Rainbow."

Italicize the title of a longer work like an entire newspaper or magazine, a whole website, a book, a complete collection of poetry, a television show, a CD, or a film either in your text or on your Works Cited page.

Here are a couple of examples to help you visualize the correct way to format different types of source titles:

• A startling headline on the front page of USA Today declared "Strategy That Is Making Iraq Safer Was Snubbed for Years."
• Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing contains a fascinating article written by Harvey Mansfield called "The Manliness of Men."
• "And Maggie Makes Three," a particularly compelling episode of Fox's hit sitcom The Simpsons, demonstrates the strength of Homer's commitment to his family.
• My favorite song on Wilco's new CD entitled Sky Blue Sky is "Either Way."

Format of the Works Cited Page

After the concluding paragraph(s) of your paper, create a new page. In Microsoft Word, you can create a new page by pressing the "Ctrl" key and the "Enter" key simultaneously. At the top center of this new page, type the words Works Cited. Do not underline, bold, italicize, or place quotation marks around these words.

Create a hanging indent format. The hanging indent format will indent all but the first line of each of the entries by one-half inch on your Works Cited page so that each entry looks like this:

Folsom, Burton W. New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. New York: Threshold Editions, 2008. Print.

Using this format makes it easier for a reader to scan the page in order to find the author (or title) s/he is looking for.

Like the rest of the paper, the Works Cited section should be double-spaced throughout, and it should have the header and continue with the page number(s).

To identify a source properly, you must cite it in two places:

• within your paper where you refer to or quote that source. This is called an in-text or parenthetical citation, and the citation usually comes at the end of the sentence.
• at the end of the paper in the Works Cited page. The citation on that page will include the full publication information for each source you use within the essay.

Using Sources in the Text

The in-text citation is a basic one, giving your reader the essential clues he/she needs to locate more complete information about the source in your Works Cited page. Your goal is to get these clues into the text of your paper without distracting your readers from the point you are making. MLA format recommends introducing your source with a signal phrase to help accomplish this.

Signal Phrase

The signal phrase tells readers that information from another source will appear next, and it serves as a brief introduction to that source. Here is an example:

Hairston, Ruszkiewicz, and Friend encourage readers not to think of their work as "a collection of dusty rules" (3).

This idea was found in a book written by three people; therefore, their names are used to signal that the information that follows is an idea they created and that, in this case, a direct piece of their text is being placed in the sentence.

The signal phrase should make your reader aware of the source's author or authors (if no author is available, refer to the title).

Parenthetical Citation

In addition to using a signal phrase to introduce your source, you must include a parenthetical citation at the end of the quotation or paraphrase of that source and place a period after the last parenthesis. If your signal phrase has already identified the author or title of the work you are referring to, you include only the page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. MLA style does not use "p." or "pp." before the page number(s).

Sometimes, using a signal phrase simply doesn't work well. In such cases, it's okay to place the author's name before the page number in the parenthetical citation. Here's an example:

Sometimes, teachers will shy away from teaching literature toward a goal of aesthetic reading because it is nearly impossible to measure accurately a student's personal responses to literature (Cline 96).

Notice that there is no punctuation between the author's name and the page number in MLA format. Notice also that the period comes after the citation.

Here are some special cases to note:

• If the author's name isn't available for a work: Use a shortened version of the work's title in the parenthetical reference. An article with the lengthy title, "Education is Top Priority in the Senate this Year" could be shortened to "Education is Top Priority" in the in-text citation(s).
• If the work has one to three authors: List the authors in the order in which they appear on the work's title page: (Stegner, Keats, and Bailey 145) or (Carver and Allen 112).
• If a work has more than three authors: List only the first author, followed by the term "et al." Here is an example: (Carver et al. 371). Don't forget to place a period after "al" since it is an abbreviation of a Latin word.

The example of a parenthetical citation given above refers to a paraphrase of Cline's work. But suppose you want to use a quotation instead of a paraphrase. The format varies depending on the length and type of quotation you are using.

Format for short quotations

Quotations fewer than four lines long are usually incorporated into your own sentences and paragraphs without the need for separate formatting.

The main character in Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden says: "We lived simple lives. We lived good lives. We lived in dignity" (28).

In addition to using a colon or a comma to separate the quotation from your writing, you can often incorporate a short quotation directly into your own sentence.

The main character in Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden believes that she and her friends "lived simple lives" (28).

Notice that the period goes after the closing parenthetical mark while the closing quotation marks go before the parentheses.

Here's a common formatting error to avoid:

In the book I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, it states that "..." (20).

Taking out the "in" and the "it" makes this much smoother.

The book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden states that "..." (20).

When you include a quotation in your own text, be sure that the signal phrase and the quotation make a complete and coherent sentence.

Format for long quotations

Quotations that are longer than four lines of text should be block-quoted. That means they should be indented two tabs from the left margin or one full inch. Here's an example:

According to Harris and Platzner, ancient Greek temples were different from modern houses of worship:

A Greek temple, such as the Parthenon, was literally the house of the god it sheltered, a holy place, where a supernatural power could reside among human beings. In contrast to modern churches, synagogues, and mosques, the temple was not intended to hold a congregation. (9)

Notice that:

• A colon ends the signal phrase leading to the longer quotation
• the parenthetical citation goes after the final period of a blocked quotation
• no quotation marks are used around a blocked quotation
• the quotation starts a new line and is indented 10 spaces.

Quotations from poetry and song lyrics

When you are quoting poetry, it is important to identify where each line ends. If you are including a short quotation within your sentence, use a slash (/) to indicate where a line breaks:

In his misery, King Lear exclaims, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/ To have a thankless child" (King Lear III.iii. 23-24).

Notice that in addition to using the slash to show the line break, the first word of the new line is capitalized because it is traditionally capitalized in poetry.

If you want to quote more than four lines of a poem or song lyrics, block-quote the lines and cite them as you would for prose with one exception: retain the original line endings in the blocked quotation.

Robert Frost's poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" conveys the speaker's weariness:

Quotations from a second-hand source

Ideally, all quotations should come from the original source. When this is not possible, however, you may cite from the second-hand (indirect) source. If the passage you quote or paraphrase from a secondary source is itself a quotation from ANOTHER source, use the abbreviation "qtd. in" (quoted in) before naming the second-hand source.

About women, the narrator of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness says, "We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse" (qtd. in Hawthorn 406).

In the Works Cited page, you will need to cite the work you are actually looking at - not the original one:

Hawthorn, Jeremy. Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment. London: Edward Arnold, 1990. Print.

The list of works on this page includes only the works referred to within the essay, not any others you may have used for background knowledge. The Works Cited page:

• appears on a separate page at the end of the essay
• lists each work actually cited in the paper in alphabetical order by author's last name
• gives author(s), title, publication information, and medium (print, CD-ROM, web, etc.) for each work
• has the title Works Cited, without any font change or punctuation in the title
• uses a hanging indent of one half-inch for the second and subsequent lines of each Works Cited entry
• abbreviates "University" and "Press" to U and P

What you put in a citation is determined by what type of source you're citing. For example, you would include different information for a personal web page citation than you would for a novel written by one author. We'll include some examples here, but we can't include an example of every possible citation type. A good MLA style guide should give you examples of a wider range of citation types (see the introduction for more information about where to find such a guide).

We can help you by providing the following information about citing works from books, articles, electronic sources, and miscellaneous sources):

• General Works Cited formatting. This is an overview of what the entry should look like when it's finished, but, of course, you will need to customize it to suit your own specific source. For example, if you are accessing a website, instead of "Print" for the type of source, you should use "Web." As a general rule, what you do not know about your source (i.e., the article is anonymous), you should not include in your citation; in other words, work with the information you have access to, and don't get creative! Do pay attention to the punctuation we use in the formats: citation punctuation is important and detailed.
• Works Cited example. We will provide the text of a properly-formatted Works Cited entry for each source. On a real Works Cited page, hanging indents and double-spacing may also need to be applied.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase. Finally, you will see an in-text (parenthetical) citation and/or signal phrase using the same example source found in Part B. If we only show a signal phrase in our example, that means the signal phrase is the most effective way to cite your source.

Note: Sometimes you may need to combine formats for two or more separate types of sources in order to identify a source properly. For formats not included here, check an MLA citation guide for a definite ruling (see the introduction for more information about where to find such a guide).

• Books, one author
• Works Cited formatting: Author's name. Book title. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Print.
• Works Cited example: Saunders, George. Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella. New York: Riverhead, 1997. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: George Saunders, in his book Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella, talks about what drew him to write these stories (22).

• Books, two or three authors
• Works Cited formatting: Authors' names in the same order as on the title page. Book title. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Print.
• Works Cited example: Dorris, Michael and Louise Erdrich. Broken Cord. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: The authors of Broken Cord point out the difficulties Native Americans have had getting off reservations (Dorris and Erdrich 342).

• Books, more than three authors
• Works Cited formatting: First author's name on title page, et al. Book title. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Print.
• Works Cited example: Purves, Alan C, et al. How Porcupines Make Love II: Teaching a Response-Centered Literature Curriculum. New York: Longman, 1990. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: This study explains that student-centered methods of teaching literature offer exciting potential for effectiveness (Purves et al. 30).

• Book with editor
• Works Cited formatting: Editor(s) name(s), ed(s). Book title. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Print.
• Works Cited example: Todd, Margo, ed. Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: The battle between church and state was no new phenomenon in the time of King Henry VIII (Todd 21-22).

• Book, second or greater edition
• Note: Books without edition labels are automatically assumed to be the first edition. For subsequent editions, check the title page to find: 1) the number of the edition (2nd ed.); 2) the name (Rev. ed., which stands for "revised edition" or Abr. ed., which stands for "abbreviated edition"); or 3) the year (2009 ed.). The format below assumes the title page uses the edition number.
• Works Cited formatting: Author's name. Book title. [Number] ed. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Print.
• Works Cited example: Spatt, Brenda. Writing From Sources. 2nd ed. New York: Bedford, 1999. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Many students fail to realize that a very close paraphrase, one that just replaces a few words with synonyms, is plagiarism (Spatt 112).

• Article from a reference book (encyclopedia, dictionary, etc.)
• Works Cited formatting: "Article Title." Name of reference book. [Number] ed. Year. Print.
• Works Cited example: "Ragtime." The Encyclopedia Americana. 2005 ed. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: As The Encyclopedia Americana notes, ragtime music is a classic rags-to-riches story, rising from sordid, lower-class roots to the posh limelight of the upper echelon of dance clubs.

• Article or chapter from an edited book or anthology
• Works Cited formatting: Author's name. "Article or chapter title." Title of edited book or anthology. Ed. [or Trans.] Names of Editor(s) or Translator(s). City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Page(s). Print.
• Works Cited example: Hartog, Francois. "Self-cooking Beef and the Drinks of Ares." The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks. Eds. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1989. 170-182. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Francois Hartog gives one explanation for the popularity of the war god in Thrace: Indeed, if Ares is capable of occupying a central place in Scythian space, it is because he is marginal in Greece (182).

• Article in a scholarly journal
• Works Cited formatting: Author's name. "Title of the article." Journal title Volume number. (Year): Page(s). Print.
• Works Cited example: Brennan, Thomas. "Epicurus on Sex, Marriage, and Children." Classical Philology 91.4. (1996): 346-352. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Thomas Brennon briefly discusses the philosopher Epicurus' views on education of children (350).

• Article in a monthly magazine
• Works Cited formatting: Author's name. "Article title." Magazine title Month Year: Page(s). Print.
• Works Cited example: Newman, Cathy. "The Joy of Shoes." National Geographic Sep. 2006: 74-93. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Cathy Newman, senior writer for National Geographic, claims that "[e]very shoe tells a story" (74).

• Daily newspaper article
• Note:  When a newspaper article lasts more than one page, write the first page number and use the plus (+) sign afterwards in the Works Cited entry.
• Works Cited formatting: Author's name. "Article title." Newspaper title Day Month Year. Page. Print.
• Works Cited example: Thomas, Albert, and Stacy Alvarez. "Their War: Should Americans Fight?" Washington Post 14 Dec. 1998. A5+. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: According to Thomas and Alvarez, the question of whether Americans should participate in the war has a complex answer (A5).

• A print source that is published online
• Works Cited formatting: If you are using the online version of a print source, follow the citation format for that type of print source. Then, instead of the medium "Print" at the end of the citation, you need to include three things:
• Website's title (italicized)
• Medium of publication (Web)
• Date of access: day, month, year
• Works Cited example: Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Penguin, 1972. Project Gutenberg. Web. 31 July 2009
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: In her literary masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen precisely uses punctuation marks and capital letters to make a bold statement about the ability to love: "'We can all BEGIN freely-- a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement'" (13).

• A non-print source that is published online
• Works Cited formatting: If you are using the online version of a non-print source, follow the citation format for the type of source (i.e., film). Then, instead of the medium of its original publication (i.e., film) at the end of the citation, include these three things:
• Website's title (italicized)
• Medium of publication (Web)
• Date of access: day, month, year
• Works Cited example: Up. Dir. Pete Docter. Film Hill. Disney/Pixar. Web. 13 July 2009.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: In the movie Up, a senior citizen and a young boy in pursuit of the elderly badge have an adventure.

• Scholarly journal (not in a database)
• Works Cited formatting: Some scholarly journals exist only online while others are both in print and online. Begin with the print source guidelines, but instead of "Print" at the end, you will need to include:
• Medium of publication (Web)
• Date of access: day, month, year

Also, some online journal articles do not follow conventional page numberings. If there are no pages listed or if the pages are not consecutive, use "n. pag."

• Works Cited example: Radachy, Julie and Christa Ehmann Powers. "Bridging the Gap Between Facilitated and Non-Facilitated Online Courses." Learning Solutions e-Magazine (2009): 1-9. Web. 12 July 2009.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: The self-regulated learning model "promotes a student's self-governance of the variables within the courses, offering a relatively high level of flexibility for the student" (Radachy and Ehmann Powers 6).

• A periodical publication in an online database
• Works Cited formatting: Begin with the print source guidelines, but instead of "Print", include:
• Database's or website's title (italicized)
• Medium of publication (Web)
• Date of access: day, month, year

Also, some online periodicals do not follow conventional page numberings. If there are no pages listed or if the pages are not consecutive, use "n. pag."

• Works Cited example: Keeley, Page. "Elementary Science Education in the K–12 System." Science and Children 46.9 (2009): 8-9. Web. 21 July 2009.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Keeley reinforces the cumulative nature of science courses (8).

• A periodical publication in an online database
• Works Cited formatting:Oftentimes, colleges subscribe to database collections. Since these sources are not directly available to the general population, the citation must be uniquely formatted to provide the reader as much information about the source as possible. In addition to the usual publication information, you need to include:
• Database's name
• Subscription service's name
• Library's location (city and state)
• Access date
• Works Cited example: Schultz, Chuck. "Woodstock: The Next Generation." World Journal of Peanuts 22 (2009): 23-35. Academic Search Complete. Austin University Lib., Austin, TX. Web. 14 July 2009.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Schultz offers his optimism to the world when he declares "happiness is an ice cream cone and mine never melts."

• An E-mail Message
• Works Cited formatting:Writer's name. "Title of the message in the subject line." Message to recipient's name. Date of the message. Medium.
• Works Cited example: Reed, Stacy. "Re: Documentation." Message to Kathryn Cuff. 22 May 2009. E-mail.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: In her email response, Reed mentioned several key goals the document needed to achieve "in order to be useful to as wide a range of writers as possible."

• A Television or Radio Broadcast
• Works Cited formatting: "Title of the episode." Title of the program or series. Name of the network. Call letters of the station, city of the station, broadcast date (day, month, year). Medium of reception (i.e., Radio, Television).
• Works Cited example: "That's Impossible: Invisibility Cloaks." The History Channel. 11 July 2009. Television.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: During "That's Impossible: Invisibility Cloaks," a man vanished when he placed an "invisibility cloak" over his body.

• A Film or Video Recording
• Works Cited formatting: Film's title. Dir. Director's name. Perf. Actors' names (if pertinent). Distributor, Year published. Film.
• Works Cited example: Dr. Strangelove. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Columbia Pictures, 1963. Film.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Dr. Strangelove played on people's fears during the Cold War era, pitting the United States against Russia in a fictitious battle.

• A Performance
• Works Cited formatting: Performance's title. Dir. Director's name. Perf. Actors' names (if pertinent). Theater group. Theater name, city. Day month year of performance. Performance.
• Works Cited example: 9 to 5. Dir. Joe Mantello. Perf. Stephanie J. Block, Marc Kudisch, Megan Hilty, and Allison Janney. Broadway, New York. 5 June 2009. Performance.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Dolly Parton's Broadway version of 9 to 5 is even more humorous than the movie version.

• A Work of Visual Art: Painting, Sculpture, etc.

Note: If using a reproduction of a visual work of art, give the complete publication information for the source where the piece appears, including the page number and the medium.

• Works Cited formatting: Artist's name. Title. Date of development (if unknown, use "n.d."). Institution where work is housed (or collection name), City name.
• Works Cited example: Wyeth, N.C. Treasure Island. n.d. The Butler Institute of American Art. Youngstown.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: The collection of N.C. Wyeth's Treasure Island pictures depicts life as a pirate.

• Personal Interview

Note: Different citation regulations exist for published and broadcasted interviews.

• Works Cited formatting: Name of the interviewee. Personal Interview. Day month year interviewed.
• Works Cited example: Way, Justin. Personal interview. 21 April 2009.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: According to Way, Labrador and Golden Retrievers are the easiest to train for service work.

• Cartoon or Comic Strip
• Works Cited formatting: Artist's name. "Title of the cartoon (if any)." Cartoon (or Comic strip). Day month year of publication: Page. Medium.
• Works Cited example: Schulz, Charles. "Peanuts." Comic strip. The Sharon Herald. 10 July 2009: C-3. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: Using America's beloved beagle to show the bond between a dog and its owner, Charles Schulz uses non-verbal communication between Snoopy and Charlie Brown that allows Charlie to know "he claims his dog dish gets lonesome when it doesn’t have any food in it" (C-3).

• An Advertisement
• Works Cited formatting: Name of the product, company, or institution. Advertisement. [Continue with same publication information for the medium used.]
• Works Cited example: Volkswagen Cars by Volkswagen of America. Advertisement. Life 7 Jul. 1961: 4. Print.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: In the July 7, 1961 issue of Life magazine, an ad by Volkswagen promises that "you could drive a VW all day at top speed through a desert."

• Lecture or Speech
• Works Cited formatting: Speaker's name. "Title of the presentation." Meeting. Sponsoring organization, location. Date. Medium (Reading, Address, Lecture, etc.).
• Works Cited example: Revard, Stella P. "Milton and the Tangles of Neaera's Hair." Eighth International Congress on Neo-Latin Studies. Copenhagen. 15 August 1991. Lecture.
• In-text example and/or signal phrase: In her lecture, Revard discussed the relationships between Latin and English poetry.

To help the readers find the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page, MLA usually requires a parenthetical citation. This citation often includes the last name of the author(s) followed by a page number. Of course, there are variations. If the author's name has been given in a signal phrase at the beginning of the sentence, you do not need to repeat it in the parenthetical citation. As described above, not all sources give authors and/or page numbers. In those cases, you simply give enough information in the signal phrase so that the reader can locate the source's entry on the Works Cited page.

An example might make all of this a bit clearer, so let's take a look at what a typical paragraph from a paper using MLA documentation might look like.

On a separate page at the end of your draft, add the Works Cited page, which lists the sources you referred to within the paper. This Writer's Handbook chapter has discussed several sample Works Cited entries (books, articles, electronic sources, and miscellaneous) above.

Summary

When using MLA style, remember to:

• Identify your sources using signal phrases and parenthetical citations


• Include an alphabetized Works Cited page that gives full bibliographic information for each work that you used


• Name the medium in each Works Cited entry


• Create a hanging indent (where the first line is at the left-hand margin and each subsequent line in the same entry is indented a half inch or five spaces) on the Works Cited page


• Double-space everything: your text, the text of quotations, and the entries on the Works Cited page


• Use page numbers (but not p.) in parenthetical citations

Most importantly, to avoid unintentional plagiarism, cite all sources used within the essay. Citations should appear where you have inserted the borrowed information and on your Works Cited page.