Online Writing Center, Darton State College 1
There are two major and some minor citation styles in use today. At Darton State College, the
most often required are the citation style created by the Modern Language Association of
America (MLA) and the citation style created by the American Psychological Association
(APA). Always check with your instructors to make sure you know which style you have to use.
This document is the introduction to MLA citation in general.
The following document was created with the help of the definitive authority on MLA rules:
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: MLA, 2009. Print.
Why do I need to learn MLA style?
Every time you write a research paper, you enter into a community of writers and
scholars. The disciplines in this community all use conventions—think of the ways
chemists, mathematicians, and philosophers use symbols and special terms to transmit
information. MLA style represents a consensus among teachers, scholars, and librarians
in the field of languages and literature on the conventions for documenting research, and
those conventions will help you organize your research paper coherently. By using MLA
style, you will direct your readers to the sources you consulted in arriving at your
findings, and you will enable them to build on your work. (xiii)
As you search for material for your research project, keep in mind that sources from which you
borrow information MUST be cited in your project in order to (1) lead your readers to your
sources and (2) to credit the source with the information you borrowed.
Follow these steps to avoid plagiarizing (please see other documents in relation to plagiarism in
the Online Writing Center’s “Plagiarism” section):
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1. Keep track of your sources: Record the sources from which you decide to use
information. The list should be electronic for easy formatting and access.
2. On your list of sources, record the essential publication information. (You will know
what they are when you learn what information is needed in the actual citations. See
further documents.)
3. As you are writing the paper, add in-text citations after all borrowed material.
4. As you add the in-text citations, create the full citation on the Works Cited page, which is
the last page of your research paper.
When you are ready to cite your sources, you will need to know that there are two types of
citations within each research project: (1) in-text citation and (2) end-of-text citation. The first is
also referred to as parenthetical citation and the second is also referred to as the Works Cited
page.
IN-TEXT, OR PARENTHETICAL, CITATIONS: In-text citations are placed inside the paper,
directly after the borrowed material. The citations provide enough information for the readers of
the paper to be able to locate the source on the Works Cited page.
Look at this example:
The aesthetic and ideological orientation of jazz underwent considerable scrutiny in
the last 1950s and early 1960s (Anderson 7).
The citation (Anderson 7) tells the reader that an author by the last name of Anderson
created the borrowed information. The number 7 refers to the page on which the information can
be found.
In other documents in the Online Writing Lab, you will find more detailed information of
the information that should be included in the citations based on the type of work you are citing.
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END-OF-TEXT, OR WORKS CITED PAGE, CITATIONS:
Every source cited with an in-text citation inside your paper MUST have an end-of-text
citation equivalent. In-text citations are meaningless without the “long” citations and the “long
citations” are meaningless without the in-text citation.
Accordingly, let us suppose that you included the above information from Anderson’s book in
your research project. You dully cited the sources inside your text. Now you have to create the
“long” citation on the Works Cited page. This is what it will look like:
Anderson, Iain. This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture. Philadelphia: U
of Pennsylvania P, 2007. Print. The Arts and Intellectual Life in Mod. Amer.
This citation mentions the author’ last and first name, the title of the book where the information
originated, the publication city, the publisher (University of Pennsylvania Press), the
publication year, the publication medium, and the title of the series under which this book
was published.
You will find more in-depth information about the Works Cited page entries in other documents
in the Online Writing Center’s “MLA” and “APA” sections.