MLA Format & Citation Rules 1, MLA In-Text Citation Matching 3, MLA Format Quiz 2
How wide must your margins be?
1 inch on all sides
On what page can your works cited be found?
The Last Page
How should the sources be listed on your works cited page?
alphabetically
Demonstration of how to cite a source with TWO authors.
(Levine and Parks 2). or Elana Levine and Lisa Parks assert that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer dramatizes the travails of its title character but uses its metaphorical representations of life and death, good and evil, comedy and tragedy to speak about the power struggles inherent in many people's everyday lives in the Western world" (2).
What size must your font be?
12 pt.
What size paper must you use if you are printing your paper?
8.5 x 11 inches
What is a signal phrase?
A phrase, clause or sentence that that introduces a quotation. Also called a lead-in Example: Susan Vreeland writes that Magdalena "loves looking out at the sea" (8). Example 2: Magdalena is a pensive girl who longs "to sit for a painting" like her sister (Vreeland 8).
When citing a work with an author parenthetically, you:
Add an open parentheses, followed by the Author's last name, a single space, then the page number or page range, adding a closed parentheses and ending with a period.
In what order do you list your sources on your Works Cited page?
Alphabetically by the author's last name, book/article title, or website name (using accessible information in that order to inform your decision).
Where does the title of your paper belong?
Below your heading, centered, before the main portion of your paper.
How should the title of your paper be formatted?
Center the title. Do not underline, italicize, or place your title in quotation marks. Also write in Title Case.
Where should the words Works Cited appear on the top of your page?
Centered at the top of a NEW page
What does not have to be cited?
Common Knowledge
Format for a Website Citation, without an author, for the Work(s) Cited Page
Depending on the content, credible websites do not always include authors. Ex. "Website Article." Website Title. Website Publisher, Date Month Year Published. Web. Date Month Year Accessed.
What spacing should you use for your paper?
Double Spacing
Should your heading be single-spaced or double-spaced?
Double spaced
For example, let's say you were reading a book titled Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton that included a quotation by Sigmund Freud. If you wanted to use Freud's quotation in your essay, you would cite it
Even Freud acknowledged the central importance of economics in human relations, famously stating, "The motive of human society is in the last resort an economic one" (qtd. in Eagleton 151). Your Works Cited list will contain an entry for Eagleton's book but not Freud's original text.
True/False: Works Cited are only used on writing assignments.
False-Works cited should be used ANYTIME you use an idea, fact, picture or saying that is not your own!
If you were quoting from two different books by Paulo Freire, (Pedagogy of Hope and Letters to Cristina) your parenthetical citations might look like
Freire emphasizes the crucial role of hope in the struggle for change. Acknowledging that hope "seldom exists apart from the reverses of fate" (Letters 14), Freire argues that the "dream of humanization . . . is always a process" (Pedagogy 99). I am NOT using the author's last name here because I am using two different works by the same author, therefore I need to differentiate between the two sources, so I am using the source titles rather than the author.
In online sources, such as websites, many do not have page numbers. In such cases, how should I cite it?
If an online source does not have a page number, provide the number of the paragraph in which you found the information or quotation you are citing if possible: (Martinez, par. 8)
What do I put in parentheses for a work without an author?
If you cite a work without an author listed, include a brief version of the title in parentheses, followed by the page number if the page number has not already been mentioned in the signal phrase.
When you directly quote from, summarize, or paraphrase an outside source, what must you do to avoid plagiarism?
Include an in-text citation at the end of the quote or at the end of the paraphrased or summarized sentence.
When you refer to an entire work in your writing, what do you have to include for a parenthetical citation?
Include only the author's name, either in the same sentence or in parentheses at the end of the sentence. No page numbers are needed.
What is the bibliography or list of sources called in MLA?
It is called a Works Cited page in MLA format
What is a hanging indent?
It is the reverse of a paragraph indent. In a hanging indent, the first line is not indented, but all other lines are indented for each entry.
How should titles of long works, such as novels and plays be formatted?
Italicize longer works
What is the format for an in-text (parenthetical) citation that does not name the author in a signal phrase?
Last name and page number example: (Vreeland 8).
What belongs in the upper right-hand corner of your paper?
Last name followed by a single space and your page number. No parentheses. This is different than a citation.
Format for a Website Citation, with an author, for the Work(s) Cited Page
Last, First M. "Article Title."Website Title. Website Publisher, Date Month Year Published. Web. Date Month Year Accessed.
If you are referring to a work by more than three authors, whether in a signal phrase or parenthetical citation...
List only the first author's name followed by the Latin phrase et al. (which means "and others"). There is no comma after the name of the author.
What does a Works Cited page do?
Lists all of the sources you've used
What does "MLA" stand for?
Modern Language Association
What does the acronym MLA stand for?
Modern Language Association
What is the proper format for an MLA heading?
Name Course name Teacher's name Day Month Year
Work in an anthology
Name the author of the particular work, not the editor of the entire anthology, in your citation. The entry in your Works Cited list would include the editors' names.
If you were citing a story by Nathan Englander that appears in the anthology The Best American Short Stories 2012, edited by Tom Perrotta and Heidi Pitlor, you would not need to mention the editors of the anthology:
Nathan Englander plays off Raymond Carver's famous story title in his short work "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank."
Does the Works Cited page count as a page of content or body?
No, but it is still numbered sequentially.
Are sources numbered on the Works Cited page?
No, sources do NOT get numbered on the Works Cited page
In MLA format, should you have additional space in between each paragraph of your essay since this is the way that newer versions of Microsoft Word automatically format your paper?
No, you need to fix it!
What is the format for an in-text (parenthetical) citation from a source with page numbers that already names the author in a signal phrase?
Page number Example: (8).
When you use quoted or paraphrased information, where do you place the end punctuation for a sentence: before the in-text citation or after the in-text citation?
Place the end punctuation (period) after the last parentheses following the in-text citation.
How should titles of short works, such as poems, articles, and short stories be formatted?
Put them in quotation marks
How are entries (sources) arranged in a Works Cited page?
Sources are arranged alphabetically, by author's last name. If no author is given, the title is used for alphabetizing.
How do you format your Works Cited page?
Start each entry on new line, regular left margin, Indent the second and all subsequent lines ("hanging indent") Double space all lines.
If you were paraphrasing information from page 79 of a journal article titled "Empirical Foundations for Writing in Prevention and Psychotherapy," by Brian A. Esterling, Luciano L'Abate, Edward J. Murray, and James W. Pennebaker, the parenthetical citation would look like:
Studies have shown that writing has therapeutic benefits for some patients (Esterling et al. 79).
Example of a sentence that has properly cited a website in the parenthetical.
The Modern Language Association was founded in 1883 and Accoring to the Modern Language Association's (MLA) website, the MLA was founded in 1883 (mla.org).
These are formatting facts about Block Quotes:
The entire block quote is indented, without quotation marks, and the citation is listed in parentheses at the end, including the Author's last name and page number AFTER the period. Example: text text text text text. (Adichie 4)
Where does a period go if a sentence ends with a parenthetical citation?
The period is placed AFTER the closed parentheses in a parenthetical citation. For example: "..." (9).
When citing something from a source with one author and when the author's name has NOT already been mentioned in the signal phrase/sentence including the quote, how should a citation look at the end of a sentence? Pretend the author's last name is Frye for this example.
The point has been argued before (Frye 197).
if you cited information from page 27 of an article from The Economist (with no author) titled "Carrying the Torch," it would look like:
The sports management industry in Great Britain received a significant boost in business as a result of the 2012 Olympic Games in London ("Carrying" 27).
Long Quotations (four or more lines of text), AKA Block Quotations
These quotations should be indented one inch from the left as a block quotation—without quotation marks. The entire block should be double-spaced, and no additional space should be used above or below the block quotation. The page number for the quotation is included in parentheses at the end of the block quotation. the parenthetical citation is placed after the final period of the block quotation. If the author's name does not appear in the main text, include it in the parentheses.
T/F You only use block quotes when quoting more than 4 lines (even if it's less than four sentences) of text
True, a block quote occurs only when one is quoting more than 4 lines of text.
True/False: a book citation is different than a website citation.
True, a book citation IS different than a website citation.
T/F The only time one uses "et al" in addition to one author's name is in a situation in which one is citing a text with three or more authors.
True, one only uses "et al" in addition to one author's name when one is citing a source with three or more authors
If there is no author given in a work that you are quoting in your paper, how do you cite this work in the in-text (parenthetical) citation?
Use shortened version of title in quotation marks Example: ("Magdalena" 8).
Are electronic sources treated differently from print sources?
When citing electronic sources, follow the same principles you would use when citing other sources, but keep in mind that page numbers may be more difficult to find.
What font(s) are allowed in MLA format?
While Times New Roman is the preferred font, MLA accepts legible fonts that have italics and regular font that look different from one another. (i.e. Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri).
In MLA formatting, a Bibliography is called a what on an essay?
Works Cited page
Is the Works Cited page numbered?
Yes, it is numbered in the same way as the other pages in the paper, but the sources themselves are NOT numbered.
If your teacher's directions for formatting vary slightly from the official MLA guidelines, which should you follow?
Your teacher's directions
What is a source?
any idea, fact, picture or say you did not create yourself
As a writer it is your responsibility to give what to your sources?
credit
If the entry continues to the second line, what should you do?
indent 5 spaces or tab (hanging indent)
What is the correct way to indicate that no date is available?
n.d. is typed in place of the date.
If you fail to give proper credit to your sources, what have you done?
plagiarized
What do you do to show that a title is from a short piece of text like a poem, article, song, short story, or a tv episode?
quotation marks
What do you do to show that the title is from a book, movie, album, video game or tv show?
underline or italicize
When using a quotation from one source that you have found in another source
use the abbreviation qtd. in (for "quoted in") to indicate that you are taking the quotation from a second source rather than from the original text.
