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What is MLA?

MLA stands for the Modern Languages Association, and it is a documentation format to acknowledge sources in a paper. MLA is the common format for English and other humanities courses.

Why MLA?

Why do we cite other sources in our research papers? The short answer is to give credit where credit is due. Many hours and sweat went into writing the books and articles that provide us with information or ideas, and passing these off as your own work is plagiarism. Also, if anyone who read your paper wanted more information, all they would have to do is look at the Works Cited page of your paper, and they would find all the information needed to locate that book, right down to the page number you borrowed it from.

Don’t let the MLA format intimidate you. It has a logical pattern once you understand it.

The following examples are derived from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, available at the Writing Center or Lied Library. For more help, please refer to the following links:

• UNLV Library's Website
• Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
• MLA's Official Website

MLA Paper Format

Here are the general paper guidelines:

• One-inch (1") on all sides (top, bottom, left, right)
• Double-spaced text
• All text is left-aligned (not justified!)
• Last name and page number on the top right of the document, one-half inch top margin (.5") -- In Microsoft Word, select "View," "Header and Footer," and set the header to the top right.
• Heading on page 1: your name, professor's name, course title, and the date in day month year format (ex: 12 July 2006)
• Title is beneath the heading, centered. No bold, no underline -- plain text.

Citing Sources

First, let’s show you an example of what a Works Cited page looks like. This example is courtesy of the Hunter College Reading/Writing Center. “Works Cited” is the only option to label this page (not References or Bibliography). And all lines are double-spaced. Notice the hanging indent. NEVER manually align sentences with the space bar—you should use the hanging indent.

(If you are using Microsoft Word, you can do this by selecting the information that you want to have as a hanging indent (ie select all of the references), click on the Format option on the menu bar at the top of Microsoft Word, then select Paragraph from the hanging menu, and finally you will see a pop-up window. There will be a few options available, but look for an option in the indentation section that says "Special" in a drop-down menu. Select Hanging, and then click OK. You should have proper hanging indents.)

Going back to the Works Cited page, you can see that the list is in alphabetical order. Imagine the confusion if you had several Works Cited pages and they were in any ole order: you would have to scan line by line to find the author or paper you wanted. When you don’t have the name of the author (as many sources on the Internet lack), you have to alphabetize by the next available information, which is usually the title.

Let’s look at a simple example of a citing a book. The last entry on the page is Schuller’s book about jazz. I know it’s a book because the title is underlined or italicized, the only two available styles for a book title. Notice that we write the surname first and then the given name. End this with a period so nobody will be confused on where a name starts or ends. Next comes the title (end with a period), followed by the publication information: that is, the city of publication, publisher’s name, and year of publication. The punctuation used between them is important; a colon (:) separates the city from the publisher, and a comma distinguishes the publisher from the year the book was published (this information is usually located in the first page or so of a book). And don’t forget that period after the year. All MLA entries follow this basic format.

Now let’s examine citing an article. In the first entry by Reginald Smith Brindle, we find his article titled “The Search Outwards: The Orient, Jazz, Archaisms.” Once again I know this is an article because of punctuation—quotes always punctuate an article title (and songs, short stories, and poems). Notice the title of the article is before the title of the book and punctuated with a period to separate it from the rest of the entry. The 133-46 written after the publication year are the page numbers the article covers, so I can go straight to that book, turn to page 133, and find the first page of the article. Once again that ubiquitous period is placed after the numbers (no p’s here for page numbers!). A journal entry is similar, but includes the issue (or volume) number with the title. This is not italicized (or underlined) because it is not part of the title, but tells the reader which issue to look in to find that particular article. Also note that there is no period separating the issue number or title—and the year is in parenthesis:

EXAMPLE:
Coley, J. “How to Find Dates at Funerals.” Journal of Sociology 13.3 (2006): 42-46.

The Internet

Here is where things get a bit tricky. Because the Internet has changed our world faster than we can keep up with it, not everyone agrees yet on how to cite sources from the World Wide Web. But don’t cry. In short, you need a few more bits of information to cite material from the Internet:

• The date the article, book, or whatever was last updated on the net
• The database, if applicable
• The date you retrieved it (because the Internet changes everyday)
• The URL

Of course, you may not find all this information. Sometimes you can’t even find the author of an article (and maybe you shouldn’t be using it!). Here are some examples. Pay attention to how each section is punctuated (those periods again).

EXAMPLE:
Robinson, Suann. “Hit Me One More Time: My Life as a Compulsive Gambler.” Newsweek Online 22 June 2003. 1 Aug. 2005 http://web.newsweek.com/freelance.html.

In the above example, Ms. Robinson’s article was posted June 22, 2003 (note that MLA format writes dates day-month-year and does not abbreviate May, June, or July), but I didn’t cite it for a paper until August 1, 2005. I know it was written in 2003 because this date is next to the title and has no period. Here’s an example of a journal article from an online service provided by a library:

EXAMPLE:
Sacksteder, Paul. “Poets Are People Too.” Poetry Review 32 (1998): 9-16. JSTOR. 1 Oct. 2002 http://www.jstor.org/search.

So you can see that the only additional information that went into citing this source was the database (JSTOR). Because the journal has a specific issue and year, it wasn’t necessary to cite the date the journal was posted on the net (it wouldn’t matter anyway, because we have the specific info needed to find that issue). But what is necessary is the date you looked it up online, which was October 1.

Parenthetical Documentation

We’re almost done, but there is still one more format we have to discuss: parenthetical documentation. So far everything we discussed goes on the Works Cited page at the end of your paper. But when you are writing your paper and you want to insert a quote, fact, or even paraphrase, you have to give credit to the original author. In the body of your paper, all you have to cite is essential information, which in MLA style means author and page number. We can better illustrate this through example, so let’s use the sample immediately above from Mr. Sacksteder: “Poets work on the fringes of the artistic community, easily stereotyped as emotionally unstable and oversensitive” (Sacksteder 11).

This is what a student quoted directly from the article. Everything between the quotations is word-for-word what Mr. Sacksteder wrote. Therefore, if I wanted to find where the student found this quote all I have to do is find the author (Sacksteder) on the Works Cited page (remember it would be in alphabetical order, so I can just scan down to the s’s), go on the Internet to pull the article, and turn to page 11 (if the information is from the Internet, and doesn’t have page numbers, than count paragraphs and abbreviate it with “par.”). It’s that simple. Pay attention: the student included the author’s name and page number in parenthesis and before the period. That way I know it belongs in that sentence and not the one after. And if you look closely, you will not find a comma between the author’s name and page number. However, we don’t have to follow this format. Let’s spice it up a bit.

EXAMPLE:
According to Sacksteder, “poets work on the fringes of the artistic community, easily stereotyped as emotionally unstable and oversensitive” (11).

Since I mentioned the author’s name in the text, it is not necessary to rename him in the parenthesis—I just cite the page number. We can even provide more information, such as the title of the article:

EXAMPLE:
According to Sacksteder’s article, “Poets Are People Too,” he claims that poets are often misperceived in the art world (11).

Note: When a quotation follows the word "that," do not use a comma.

EXAMPLE
Freud states that "a dream is the fulfillment of a wish" (154).

However, we still have to cite all that information on the Works Cited page at the end of the paper. In other words, you can change up your parenthetical documentation, but your Works Cited page doesn’t change, regardless of what you mention or don’t mention in your paper.

For quotations longer than four lines of prose or three lines of verse, you must "block" or indent ten spaces from the left margin. You do not use quotation marks, and colons are commonly used to introduce a block quote.

Citation formulas are pending.

And now, a few parting words: whenever in doubt, cite a source. The only exception is when the information is common knowledge. For example, "George Washington was the first president of the United States." Plagiarism is a serious, and in the age of the Internet, it is harder to get away with such an academic offense. Don’t let MLA intimidate you into not citing sources. If you have any questions, just visit the Writing Center or library.