mla citations

MLA Citations

• The Modern Language Association (MLA) Style is widely used for identifying research sources.

• In MLA style you briefly credit sources with parenthetical citations in the text of your paper, and give the complete description of each source in your Works Cited list. – The Works Cited list, or Bibliography, is a list of

all the sources used in your paper, arranged alphabetically by author's last name, or when there is no author, by the first word of the title (except A, An or The). [5.1-5.5]

• For example: In the text of your paper:

– The first gambling Web site appeared in 1995, and online gambling has since become the most lucrative Internet business (Will 92).

– or, George Will reported that in 2002 Internet gambling surpassed pornography to become the Internet's most lucrative business (92).

• In your Works Cited list: – Will, George F. "Electronic Morphine."

Newsweek 25 Nov. 2002: 92.

• Web Sources: If you use electronic sources, you must work with whatever information is provided at the online site.

• When possible, use this format: (Author page#) or (Title page#). If no page numbers are provided, use paragraph, section, or screen numbers instead and include the standard abbreviation, if there is one: (Author, sec. #) or (Title, screen #).

• Remember to include a comma when using abbreviations in parenthetical citations.

• If you mention the author in your introduction, you do not need the parenthetical name, but such a practice is not recommended because it may make the quotation at first appear to have no citation:

• Alan Schuster recommends adding spa shock "in order to help assure a sanitizer level" in your spa.

More examples

Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).

Ezekiel saw "what seemed to be four living creatures," each with faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle (New Jerusalem Bible, Ezek. 1.5-10).

• A team can be defined as "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable" (Katzenbach and Smith 45).

• Abraham Lincoln's birthplace was designated as a National Historical Site in 1959 (National Park Service). 

www.easybib.com

Keel M. "Pro Death Penalty." 02 Fall 2007. 21 Mar. 2008 <www.prodeathpenalty.com>.

Repeat process for each source