MLA Citation Guidelines

There are specific formats for writing up your research sources, depending upon what source your information derives from. Following are some of the common Research Source Types with a brief explanation of how to write up the MLA Citation, and then an example. These are not all of the possible research source types. For additional MLA reference, go to Purdue Universitys The Owl website at <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/> (a tremendous resource to bookmark, regardless!) When listing dates, abbreviate months as follows: January Jan. February Feb. March Mar. April Apr. May May June June July July August Aug. September Sept. October Oct. November Nov. December Dec. List dates in the following format: date month year (listing the months abbreviation and the year in four digit format). For example, to write the date for the 12th day of March of 2008, you would write: 12 Mar. 2008. When listing publication information, if your source does not provide required information, you need to insert a placeholder to state this information was not listed (and that you didnt just forget it). Use the following abbreviations for information you cannot supply: n.p. No place of publication or publisher given n.d. No date of publication given Inserted before the colon, the abbreviation n.p. indicates no place, after the colon, it indicates no publisher. However, if a book or article is written anonymously (the author is not listed), do not write anonymous or anon. Simply do not list any author information. BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS: Book by a Single Author: Authors name. Title of book. Publication information. Use a colon between the city of publication and the publisher, a comma between the publisher and the date, and period after the date. Add the medium of publication, which, in most cases, is either Print or Web, followed by a period. Ex. Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History. New York: Walker, 2002. Print. Book by Two or More Authors: Cite authors names in the same order as on the title page. Reverse only the name of the first author, add a comma, and give the other name(s) in normal form, separating the last name with the word and. Place a period after the last name. Ex. Marquat, James W., Sheldon Ekland Olson, and Jonathan R. Sorensen. The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990. Austin: U of Texas P, 1994. Print. Article in a Reference Book: If the article is signed, list the author first, otherwise list the title first. (Do not cite the editor of the reference work.) If the articles are arranged alphabetically, you may omit volume and page numbers. Ex. Mohanty, Jitendra M. Indian Philosophy. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia. 15th ed. 1987. Print. Ex. Noon. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. Print. An Introduction, a Preface, a Foreword, or an Afterward: Begin with the name of the author of the intro/preface/forward/afterward, then give the name of the part being cited, capitalized but neither italicized nor enclosed in quotation marks. If the writer is different from the complete work, cite the author of the work after its title, giving the full name, in normal order, preceded by the word by. Ex. Coetzee, J. M. Introduction. The Confusions of Young Trless. By Robert Musil. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. New York: Penguin, 2001. v-xiii. Print. Pamphlet: Treat a pamphlet as a book, except you usually do not have an author. Ex. Renoir Lithographs. New York: Dover, 1994. Print.

Government Publication: If there is no author, cite as the author the government agency that issued it. State the name of the government agency first, followed by the name of the agency, using an abbreviation if the context makes it clear. Then state the title of the document and the publication information. Most federal publications are published by the Government Printing Office (GPO), in Washington D.C. Ex. Dept. of Labor. Child Care: A Workforce Issue. Washington: GPO, 1988. Print. PERIODICALS: Following is a list of most of the possible components of an entry for an article in a periodical and the order in which they are normally arranged: 1. Authors name 5. Volume number 2. Title of the article 6. Issue number 3. Name of the periodical 7. Date of publication 4. Series number or name 8. Page numbers If an article is longer than one page and runs over consecutive pages then list the first and last page number separated by a dash. However, if the article is continued on a page later in the periodical, then list the first page of the article followed by a + sign. Article in a Newspaper: Give the name of the newspaper as it appears on the masthead but omit any introductory article (New York Times, not The New York Times). If an edition of the newspaper is listed on the masthead, add a comma after the date and specify the edition (e.g. natl. ed., late ed.). Follow the date, and the edition if there is one, with a colon and the page number or numbers. Ex. Jeromack, Paul. This Once, a David of the Art World Does Goliath a Favor. New York Times 13 July 2002, late ed.: B7+. Print. Article in a Magazine: After the complete date, insert a colon and then the inclusive page numbers of the article. Do not cite the volume and issue numbers even if they are listed. Ex. Weintraub, Arlene, and Laura Cohen. A Thousand-Year Plan for Nuclear Waste. Business Week 6 May 2002: 94-96. Print. NON-PRINT SOURCES: Television or Radio Program: Depending on what information is provided, the information in an entry for a television or radio program usually appears in the following order: 1. Title of the episode or segment, if appropriate (in quotation marks) 2. Title of the program (in italics) 3. Title of the series, if any (neither in italics nor in quotation marks) 4. Name of the network 5. Call letters and city of the local station (if any) 6. Broadcast date For the inclusion of other information that may be important (e.g. performers, director, narrator, number of episodes), separate each entry with a period. Ex. Passion. By Stephen Sondheim. Dir. James Lapine. Perf. Donna Murphy, Jere Shea, and Marin Mazzie. Amer. Playhouse. PBS. WNET, New York. 7 Mar. 1996. Radio. Sound Recording: The person cited first (e.g. the composer, conductor, or performer) will depend on the desired emphasis. List the title of the recording, the artist or artists, the manufacturer (Capitol), and the year of issue (if the year is unknown, write n.d.) Place a comma between the manufacturer and the date; periods follow the other items. Ex. Holiday, Billie. The Essence of Billie Holiday. Columbia, 1991.

An Interview: Begin with the name of person interviewed. If the interview is part of a program, include the title of the interview in quotation marks, if the interview was produced independently (rather than as part of another work), italicize the title. Ex. Fellini, Federico. The Long Interview. Juliet of the Spirits. Ed. Tullio Kezich. Trans. Howard Greenfield . New York: Ballantine, 1996. 17-64. Interviews Conducted by the Researcher: Ex. Shakespeare, William. Personal interview. 1 Jan. 2008. Ex. Tennyson, Lord Alfred. Telephone interview. 25 June 2007. Ex. Dickinson, Emily. E-mail interview. 19 Sept. 2007. ELECTRONIC SOURCES: Since many electronic sources do not have consistent information, you will find that some citations are more completely filled out than others. A Web entry usually contains most of the following components in sequence: 1. Name of the author, compiler, editor, director, narrator, performer, or translator of the work 2. Page title (italicized if the page is independent; in quotation marks if the page is part of a larger website) 3. Title of the overall Web site (italicized), if distinct from item 2 4. Version or edition used 5. Publisher or sponsor of the site; if not available, use N.p. 6. Date of publication (day, month, and year, as available); if nothing is available, use n.d. 7. Medium of publication (Web) 8. Date of access (day, month, and year) 9. URL When citing an URL be sure to remove the hyperlink (a hyperlink is underlined and in blue type. Your word processor inserts it automatically, so you will have to right-click on the URL and choose Remove Hyperlink). If a website forwards you to a PDF document, then use the URL of the webpage that held the link to the PDF. For example, if you are on a webpage and click on a link that forwards you to a MS Word document where your quotation is taken from, then close the MS Word document and copy the URL from the last webpage you were on (which has the link to the PDF document on it.) Website with an Author: Ex. Nock, Matthew K. Suicide. KidsHealth. June Nemours Foundation, 2008. Web. 13 Aug. 2008. <http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/mental_health/suicide.html>. Website without an Author: Ex. The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids. Brothers Grimm. Virginia Commonwealth University, 1999. Web. 13 Aug 2008. <http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/wolf_e.html>. Article in an Online Periodical: List the information just as you would if you found the article in a print periodical, adding the date of access and URL to the end of the citation. Newspaper: Ex: Achenbach, Joel. Americas River. Washington Post 5 May 2002. Web. 20 May 2002. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/search.html?st=May%205,%202002>. Magazine: Ex. Levy, Steven. Great Minds, Great Ideas. Newsweek 27 May 2002. Web. 20 May 2002. <http://www.msnbc.com/news/754336.asp>. Article in a Scholarly Journal: When citing articles from a scholarly journal, you follow the basic rules for that of a book: it has three main divisions: Authors name. Title of the article. Publication information. Follow the rules for authors name and title of article as you would in a book (see examples below). For publication information, after the title of the article, give the journal title (italicized), the volume number followed by a period and the issue number, the year of the publication (in parentheses), a colon, the name of the database (italicized), a period, only if the journal entry came from a database, the URL information, a period.

Scholarly Journal found independently (not part of an archival database online): Ex: Dane, Gabrielle. Reading Ophelias Madness. Exempleria 10.2 (1998): n. pag. Web. 22 June 2002. <http://web.english.ufl.edu/english/exempleria/danefram.htm>. Scholarly Journal that is part of an archival database online: Ex: Chan, Evans. Postmodernism and Hong Kong Cinema. Postmodern Culture 10.3 (2000): Project Muse. Web. 20 May 2002. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/prnc/v020/20.3.chan.html>. Television or Radio Program: Ex. Komando, Kim. Password Security. WCBS News Radio. WCBS, New York. 20 May 2002. Transcript. Radio. 23 May 2002. <http://wcbs880.com/komano/Story/Folder/ story_1002173851_html>. WORKS CITED PAGE: Rules for your Works Cited Page: double space citations put one extra space between individual entries use hanging indentation: indent 5 spaces (or tab) on the second line (& all following lines) of each entry entries are always in alphabetical order according to author last name or article title (if no author) put a period at the end of every entry do not divide your Works Cited page into section according to the type of source do not number the entries only works cited in your paper should be listed on your Works Cited page ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: An annotated bibliography is similar to a Works Cited Page, except you write a paragraph, including a quotation, for each citation that you plan to use in your paper. The Annotated Bibliography follows the same rules as the Works Cited page. Following are two entries from an Annotated Bibliography page: SAMPLE: Sengers, Phoebe. Cultural Informatics: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. Surfaces 8:107 (1999). Web. 3 Aug. 2002. <http://pum12.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/sgml/vol8/sengers.sgm>. This journal article gave me a completely new perspective on how artificial intelligence not only interacts with but interferes with the way people work on a daily basis. We often think of computers as helping, and the smarter the computer, the more help they will be. This article looks at AI, from the perspective of being more intrusive and thus less helpful. According to Phoebe Sengers, Artificial Intelligence removes the human element from daily mental exercises. As the computer integrates itself more firmly, the human becomes ever more dependent, thus ever more vegetative (Sengers 1999). Tolson, Nancy. Making Books Available: The Role of Early Libraries, Librarians, and Booksellers in the Promotion of African American Childrens Literature. African American Review 32 (1998). JSTOR. Web. 1 Oct. 2002. <http://www.jstor.org/search>. This journal article provided me with a wealth of information about the development literacy in the African American community. I was amazed to find out that early, underground libraries were established in the 1800s specifically for African Americans, because they were not allowed to read. A small network of underground libraries began to develop throughout the south in the early 1800s as some African Americans began to learn to read (Tolson 2002).

RULES FOR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY (that are different than a Works Cited page): double space citation entries; however, single space annotation entries. Every entry must have a quotation with parenthetical citation Do not indent your annotation paragraphs. Each new paragraph is double spaced then left-justified PARENTHETICAL DOCUMENTATION: In your Works Cited, you are indicating to your reader what sources you used in your writing. With your Parenthetical Citations, you are identifying exactly what information you found in each source and exactly where in the work you found the material. To do this, you insert a brief parenthetical acknowledgement (often the authors name and a page reference) in your paper. ALL parenthetical citations have two (2) pieces of information in them. The ideal parenthetical citation has an author and a page number with no comma between them: As scientists are well aware, piranhas are a very tricky species (Smith 58). - Websites: since websites do not usually have page numbers, for website sources it is preferable to list the paragraph number the quotation was taken from: According to Brown, spiders spin webs much faster than they did in the past (Spiders World par. 9). - Interviews: write the last name of the person interviewed and the year of the interview: (Locke 2009). If more than one interview occurred with that person, then put last name, month & year: (Locke Aug. 2009). IFyou have no page number or paragraph number reference to list as the second part of your parenthetical citation, then use the first date listed from that Works Cited entry. Place the parenthetical reference where a pause would normally occur (preferably at the end of a sentence), as near as possible to the material documented. The parenthetical reference (everything inside the parentheses) precedes the punctuation mark that concludes the sentence, clause, or phrase of the borrowed material. The parenthetical reference must match the corresponding information in the entries in your list of Works Cited. For a typical Works Cited entry, which begins with the name of the author (or editor, or narrator, or title), the Parenthetical Reference lists the same name. When the Works Cited contains only one work by an author, you need give only the authors last name to identify the work: (Patterson 183-84). If your Works Cited contains more than one author with the same last name, you must add the first initial: (A. Patterson 183-84) and (L. Patterson 491). If the initial is shared too, the full first name(Alex Patterson 18384) and (Lynette Patterson 491). If the work has two or three authors, give the last names of all the authors in the order they are listed on the Works Cited: It is 91 million miles from the earth to the sun (Rabkin, Greenberg, and Olander 294). If the work has more than three authors, either give the first authors last name followed by et al., or list all the last names. If a book or website has no author and is listed on the Works Cited by title, use the title for the citation, shortened or in full. If two works on the Works Cited have the same title, add a publication fact, such as a date, that distinguishes this work: In the winter the snowy owl feeds primarily on small rodents (Snowy Owl 2002 74). This citation shows that of the two identical titles, the quote is from the 2002 publication, and can be found on pg 74. If the citation is listed by title, format of the title as used in the parenthetical citation is the same format as listed in the Works Cited (e.g. if the title is in quotation marks in the Works Cited, then it should be in quotations in the parenthetical citation; if the title is in italics in the Works Cited, then it should be in italics in the parenthetical citation.)