MLA Citations
Woo hoo!
MLA…WHAT?
• Hopefully you all are a little
familiar with MLA citation
format and remember how to use
it from other classes.
MLA…WHAT?
• MLA stands for Modern Language
Association, and it is the format we
most often write in when we are
writing in the disciplines that are
part of the Humanities.
MLA…WHAT?
• There are other citation formats as
well like Chicago (sometimes used in
History) or APA (American
Psychological Association…used in the
Social Sciences)
Why cite?
• MLA citation is really all about one
thing…giving credit to the original author
of a text or an idea.
• People’s intellectual property is legally
theirs; it belongs to them.
• Therefore, it is our responsibility as
writers to give credit for ideas that are
not our own.
Plagiarism
• Also, there are consequences for using
others’ ideas without proper citation…or
plagiarizing.
• Plagiarizing can be many things… from
copying an essay from the internet, down
to not fully paraphrasing a sentence from
a source.
• Each level of plagiarism has different
consequences, but all plagiarism can be
avoided with proper citation.
MLA Requirements
• When using MLA format, you need to
be sure to cite in two places:
• 1. In-text using parenthetical
citations.
• 2. At the end of your paper on a
works cited page.
Parenthetical Citations
• In-text citations are like the key to a map while the
works cited page is the map. You want your reader to
be able to easily match the two up.
• That is why the first thing that appears in the citation
on the works cited page is the thing goes in the
parenthetical citation. More often than not that thing
is the author’s last name. Sometimes it is the title of
the book or article if the author is unknown.
• You also want your reader to be able to find the
specific information in the book that you cited, so we
also include the page number in the parenthetical
citation, only if it is available.
Works Cited page
• The Works Cited page is where the
reader of your paper can find all the
information he or she would need to
go and find your Internet.
• Incidentally, works cited pages in
articles you read are great places to
find other articles and books on your
subject.
Examples…
• Here are some examples of how to cite
some literary texts, in the text of your
paper… We’ll start with poetry because it
is a little different. With a poem, you still
want to use the author’s last name, but
you want to include the line number
instead of the page number, so your
reader can find the quote in the poem.
Sharon Olds’ “Rites of
Passage”
• In MLA format, titles of poems are
always in quotation marks. Short
story titles can be in quotes also, but
the titles of book are either
underlined or in italics.
Sharon Olds’ “Rites of
Passage”
• Let’s pretend I want to cite Sharon
Olds’ poem. You always want to
introduce quotes with a signal phrase,
so I might say:
In Olds’ poem “Rites of Passage,” she describes
the boys at her son’s party as, “short men, men in
first grade/with smooth jaws and chins” (lines 34).
Sharon Olds’ “Rites of
Passage”
• Notice a few things here:
1. There is a comma before the
quote
2. I use a slash to show that the
line breaks in the poem (I would only
make it a block quote if I were quoting
more than 4 lines)
3. The period comes after the
parentheses at the end.
Sharon Olds’ “Rites of
Passage”
• Here I only use the line numbers in
the parentheses because I already
said the author’s name in the
sentence. If I hadn’t the citation
would be (Olds lines 3-4).
• Notice there are no commas in the
parentheses.
Citing Novels
• If I were citing Atwood’s novel, it would
only be a little different. I could say:
Describing herself, Offred states: “We are twolegged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels,
ambulatory chalices” (Atwood 136).
Citing Novels
• Here I introduced the quote with a colon because
I was quoting a full sentence.
• Also, I included Atwood’s name because I didn’t
mention her in my signal phrase.
•
Finally, you will notice that the page number is
simply a numeral with no pg. before it and no
comma.
Work Cited
• Here is an example of an end
citation for that same poem:
Olds, Sharon. “Rites of Passage.” Poetry
Foundation. 2004. 8 June 2010. Web. Then
the URL, but it is long and messy to put
here….so often, if you can put the shorten
version.
Work Cited
• Citations are always double spaced
with a hanging indent (first line is not
indented, but all the others are) and
they are in alphabetical order by the
first word in the citation.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale.
New York: Anchor Books, 1986. Print.
Resources for Citation
• Feel free to use a citation generator, like
www.citationmachine.net, to help you with
citation. However, you always want to
check to see that you’ve done it right. To
do that, you can use a website like the
OWL at Purdue
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/
2/11/
When do I cite?
• You need to cite anytime you use material
from the text. If it isn’t your idea…cite
it.
• Paraphrases must be cited and they also
must completely change the wording and
the sentence structure of the original
material. Paraphrases are sticky and they
get many people in trouble with plagiarism.
Other MLA stuff
• MLA formatting also has requirements
for page numbers and headings.
• MLA headings appear in the upper left
hand corner of your paper and contain:
Your name, your assignment and class,
your teacher’s last name, and the date,
each on a separate line. Your heading
should be double spaced.
Other MLA stuff
• Page numbers go on the upper right hand
side of the page and should have your last
name along with the page number (Darrow
1, Darrow 2, etc.).
• You can see examples also on the Resource
OWL at Purdue
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/
2/11/