Citing Sources: MLA Style

To avoid issues of plagiarism, it is important to document any sources you used when writing your paper. This includes any sources you quoted, paraphrased or summarized. The purpose of documentation is to enable your readers to retrace your steps, to find your source, and to read what you read. To make this possible, you must give your readers enough information to locate and identify each source you cite. For printed sources, this information generally includes: . The author . The date and place of publication . The title . Page number(s) . The publisher

And for electronic sources, this information includes (at minimum): . The site address . The date on which you accessed the information

When you are citing a source, that information must be mentioned in two places: . A brief reference contained within your writing, and . A full reference on the Works Cited page.

Brief Reference (a.k.a. in-text citation or parenthetic citation) This contains the author’s last name (if not mentioned in your writing) and page number(s).

Example: According to Angeline Goreau, Aphra Behn in her novels continually contradicts “the personal politics she had defended from the outset of her career as a writer” (252).

As you can see, the author’s name (Angeline Goreau) is mentioned in the writing so the in-text citation only needed the page number. If you quoted this without leading in with the author’s name you would have to include this in the citation as well:

Aphra Behn in her novels continually contradicts “the personal politics she had defended from the outset of her career as a writer” (Goreau 252).

Please note that there is no comma separating the two pieces of information in the citation and that the punctuation comes after the citation.

If the quote is longer than four typed lines then the quote needs to be set off (indented) and not placed in quotation marks. The following example contains both a long set off quote and a short embedded quote:

Janet Todd explains Behn’s reverence for the Stuart monarchy: She was a passionate supporter of both Charles II and James II as not simply rulers but as sacred majesties, god-kings on earth, whose private failings in no way detracted from their high office…. For her, royalty was not patriarchal anachronism as it would be for liberated writers a hundred years on, but a mystical state. (73) While it is true that Behn expressed “passionate support” in a poem written in praise of James II (Todd 73), her novels suggest that her attitude toward the Stuarts was much more complicated.

Please note that in the long indented quotation that the punctuation comes before the citation. Full Reference (a.k.a. the Works Cited page) This contains the full bibliographic information for each source previously mentioned in your paper.

Points to Remember Alphabetical Order . Arrange the list alphabetically by author, with the author’s last name first. . List an anonymous work alphabetically by the first word of the title or by the second word if the first word is A, An or The. . If your list includes two or more works by the same author, the work whose title comes earlier in the alphabet gets listed first. When writing the second entry, use three dashes (---) in place of the author’s name.

Form on the Page . Place the title, Works Cited, centered at the top of the final page. . Begin each entry flush with the left margin, but if an entry runs to more than one line, indent five spaces (or preferably tab over once, or use Hanging Indent under the Format toolbar) for each additional line. . Double-space each entry, and double space between entries.

Basic Format Books Author, Ann. and Ben Author. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, date.

Articles Author, Ann. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal #,# (date): xx-xx.

Internet Sites Author, Ann. “Title of Piece.” Publication information if there is any. Date posted. Source if there is one. Date you accessed the site

Works Cited

“Chopin, Kate.” Britannica Online. Vers 98.1.1. June 1998.  online source Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14 Aug. 1998. .

 book with one Goreau, Angeline. Reconstructing Aphra. Oxford: Oxford University author Press, 1980.

Jacobus, Mary. “Tess’s Purity.” Essays in Criticism 26 (1978): 318-  article 38.  book with two Lynch, Gerald, and David Rampton. The Canadian Essay. Toronto: authors Copp Clark Pitman, 1991.

Spielberg, Steven, dir. Saving Private Ryan. Paramount, 1998.  film Todd, Janet, ed. Aphra Behn Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge  book with one University Press, 1996. editor