Giving Credit to Your Sources:Using MLA Format to Cite Your

Sources and Avoid PLAGIARISM!

Adapted from a presentation of the Purdue University Writing Lab

Why Do I Cite My Sources?

Allows readers to find out where your information in your paper came from!

Gives you credibility as a writer—lets people know that you are using reliable information and facts!

Protects you from plagiarism!!! (plagiarism means that you use someone’s words or ideas in your paper without giving them credit)

Avoiding Plagiarism

Proper citation of your sources can help you avoid plagiarism, which is a serious offense!

Plagiarism may result in anything from failure of the assignment to suspension from school!

How do we give credit to our sources and avoid plagiarism?

Giving credit to your sources begins with keeping track of where you are getting your information when you take notes and collect information and facts for your research paper.

How do we give credit to our sources?

You make a list of all your sources on a Works Cited or Bibliography page.

You use citations within your paper every time you use information you collected from a source.

Works Cited Page A list of every source

that you make reference to in your essay

This page goes at the end of your paper

Provides the information necessary for a reader to locate any sources cited in your essay

A Sample Works Cited Page

Smith 12Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1852-1853. New York: Penguin,

1985. Print.

---. David Copperfield. 1849-1850. New York: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1958. Print.

Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World and His Novels.

Bloomington: U of Indiana P, 1958. Print.

Zwerdling, Alex. “Esther Summerson Rehabilitated.” PMLA 88 (May

1973): 429-439. Print.

Most citations contain the following basic information:

Author’s name Title of work Publication information

(what company published it, where and when it was published)

What information about a source do you include in a Works Cited Page

Book:Byatt, A. S. Babel Tower. New York: Random House, 1996. Print. Article in a Magazine:Klein, Joe. “Dizzy Days.” The New Yorker 5 Oct. 1998: 40-45. Print. Web page w/known author:Poland, Dave. “The Hot Button.” Roughcut. Turner Network Television. 28 Oct.

1998 <www.roughcut.com>. Web. 12 Nov. 2013 Newspaper article:Tommasini, Anthony. “Master Teachers Whose Artistry Glows in Private.” New

York Times 27 Oct. 1998. Print. A source with no known author:“Cigarette Sales Fall 30% as California Tax Rises.” New York Times. 14 Sept.

1999: A17. Print. Encyclopedia: Bergman, P. G. "Relativity." The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. 15th ed. 1987.

Print.

Works Cited: Some Examples

When Should You Use Cite a Source within your paper?

1. When quoting any words that are not your own Quoting means to repeat another source word for word,

using quotation marks

2. When summarizing facts & ideas from a source Summarizing means to take ideas from a large passage of

another source and condense them, using your own words

How will I create a Works Cited Page?

You will use an internet site called NoodleTools and go to NoodleBib which will help you create a works cited page.

All you will have to do is sign on to the site, select what type of source you are using (book, website, magazine, reference book) and type in the information it asks for!! (Don’t worry, we’ll be doing this step together!)

How do I let the person reading my paper know where I got my facts from? You use CITATIONS! A citation usually just tells the author’s name

and the page number in the book or the web article where you got your information.

The citation (author page #) is contained within (parentheses)

Every time you paraphrase a source or quote a source, you must put a CITATION at the end of it.

What does a Citation within your paper look like?

(author’s name and page number)

Example: You’ve just summarized some facts that you collected from

page 5 of a book called Mummies by an author named Katie Ross.

The first mummies in Ancient Egypt were discovered by Ronnie Ortega in 2005 in the Nile River Valley (Ross 5).

Notice that you’ve only given the author’s name and the number of the page where you got the facts in parentheses after the sentence in which you used facts from this source.

Notice that the period at the end of the sentence comes AFTER the CITATION.

What if I quote a source? You must use “quotation

marks” to let your reader know that you are quoting someone else’s words

Author’s last name & page number(s) of quote must appear after the quote:Mummies are “the most beautiful forms of art one has ever seen” (Ross 263).

What if my source doesn’t have an author?

If the source has no known author, then use an abbreviated version of the title:

Full Title: “California Cigarette Tax Deters Smokers”

Citation: (“California” A14)

What if my source doesn’t have a page number?

If the source doesn’t have a page number, then use n.p. (for no page):Citation: (“California” n.p.)

Make sure to give your sources credit!!!

Always include all of the sources you used to do your research on your Works Cited page.

Always give credit to your source when you quote or paraphrase from a source by using a CITATION (author’s last name and page #).