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MLA Reference

Mla reference

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Rodger Gregory
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11 views

MLA Reference

Mla reference

Uploaded by

Rodger Gregory
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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BASIC RULES

 Begin your Works Cited page on a separate page at the end of


your research paper. It should have the same one-inch margins
and last name, page number header as the rest of your paper.
 Label the page Works Cited (do not italicize the words Works Cited
or put them in quotation marks) and center the words Works Cited
at the top of the page.
o Only the title should be centered. The citation entries
themselves should be aligned with the left margin.
 Double space all citations, but do not skip spaces between entries.
 Indent the second and subsequent lines of citations by 0.5 inches
to create a hanging indent.
 List page numbers of sources efficiently, when needed. If you refer
to a journal article that appeared on pages 225 through 250, list the
page numbers on your Works Cited page as pp. 225-50 (Note:
MLA style dictates that you should omit the first sets of repeated
digits. In our example, the digit in the hundreds place is repeated
between 225 and 250, so you omit the 2 from 250 in the citation:
pp. 225-50). If the excerpt spans multiple pages, use “pp.” Note
that MLA style uses a hyphen in a span of pages.
 If only one page of a print source is used, mark it with the
abbreviation “p.” before the page number (e.g., p. 157). If a span of
pages is used, mark it with the abbreviation “pp.” before the page
number (e.g., pp. 157-68).
 If you're citing an article or a publication that was originally issued
in print form but that you retrieved from an online database, you
should type the online database name in italics. You do not need to
provide subscription information in addition to the database name.
 For online sources, you should include a location to show readers
where you found the source. Many scholarly databases use a DOI
(digital object identifier). Use a DOI in your citation if you can;
otherwise use a URL. Delete “http://” from URLs. The DOI or URL
is usually the last element in a citation and should be followed by a
period.
 All works cited entries end with a period.
ADDITIONAL BASIC RULES NEW TO MLA 2021

New to MLA 2021:

 Apps and databases should be cited only when they are


containers of the particular works you are citing, such as when they
are the platforms of publication of the works in their entirety, and
not an intermediary that redirects your access to a source
published somewhere else, such as another platform. For
example, the Philosophy Books app should be cited as a container
when you use one of its many works, since the app contains them
in their entirety. However, a PDF article saved to the Dropbox app
is published somewhere else, and so the app should not be cited
as a container.
 If it is important that your readers know an
author’s/person’s pseudonym, stage-name, or various other
names, then you should generally cite the better-known form of
author’s/person’s name. For example, since the author of Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland is better-known by his pseudonym,
cite Lewis Carroll opposed to Charles Dodgson (real name).
 For annotated bibliographies, annotations should be appended
at the end of a source/entry with one-inch indentations from where
the entry begins. Annotations may be written as concise phrases or
complete sentences, generally not exceeding one paragraph in
length.
CAPITALIZATION AND PUNCTUATION

 Capitalize each word in the titles of articles, books, etc, but do not
capitalize articles (the, an), prepositions, or conjunctions unless
one is the first word of the title or subtitle: Gone with the Wind, The
Art of War, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
 Use italics (instead of underlining) for titles of larger works (books,
magazines) and quotation marks for titles of shorter works (poems,
articles)
LISTING AUTHOR NAMES

Entries are listed alphabetically by the author's last name (or, for entire
edited collections, editor names). Author names are written with the last
name first, then the first name, and then the middle name or middle
initial when needed:

Burke, Kenneth
Levy, David M.
Wallace, David Foster

Do not list titles (Dr., Sir, Saint, etc.) or degrees (PhD, MA, DDS, etc.)
with names. A book listing an author named "John Bigbrain, PhD"
appears simply as "Bigbrain, John." Do, however, include suffixes like
"Jr." or "II." Putting it all together, a work by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
would be cited as "King, Martin Luther, Jr." Here the suffix following the
first or middle name and a comma.
MORE THAN ONE WORK BY AN AUTHOR
If you have cited more than one work by a particular author, order the
entries alphabetically by title, and use three hyphens in place of the
author's name for every entry after the first:

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. [...]


---. A Rhetoric of Motives. [...]

When an author or collection editor appears both as the sole author of a


text and as the first author of a group, list solo-author entries first:

Heller, Steven, ed. The Education of an E-Designer.


Heller, Steven, and Karen Pomeroy. Design Literacy:
Understanding Graphic Design.
WORK WITH NO KNOWN AUTHOR

Alphabetize works with no known author by their title; use a shortened


version of the title in the parenthetical citations in your paper. In this
case, Boring Postcards USA has no known author:

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations. [...]


Boring Postcards USA [...]
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. [...]
WORK BY AN AUTHOR USING A PSEUDONYM OR STAGE-NAME

New to MLA 9th edition, there are now steps to take for citing works by an
author or authors using a pseudonym, stage-name, or different name.

If the person you wish to cite is well-known, cite the better-known form of
the name of the author. For example, since Lewis Carroll is not only a
pseudonym of Charles Dodgson, but also the better-known form of the
author’s name, cite the former name opposed to the latter.

If the real name of the author is less well-known than their pseudonym, cite
the author’s pseudonym in square brackets following the citation of their
real name: “Christie, Agatha [Mary Westmacott].”

Authors who published various works under many names may be cited
under a single form of the author’s name. When the form of the name
you wish to cite differs from that which appears on the author’s work,
include the latter in square brackets following an italicized published as:
“Irving, Washington [published as Knickerbocker, Diedrich].”.

Another acceptable option, in cases where there are only two forms of
the author’s name, is to cite both forms of the author’s names as
separate entries along with cross-references in square brackets: “Eliot,
George [see also Evans, Mary Anne].”.

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