Your Spirit Guide to MLA Citation
No, there is nothing mystical about this handout, just as there is nothing mystical about
citation - although it certainly can be mystifying. I call this a spirit guide because it asks you to
focus on the spirit of using and crediting sources rather than on the labyrinthine details.
Remember, you can always get the details from a reference book or a website, but if you do
not fully comprehend the purpose and basic system for citation, all the websites in the world
won’t save you. In fact, you will be much more likely to make errors and even commit
plagiarism. So, this guide will be (reasonably) concise and skeletal, and from it you should
be able to flesh out the citation details of just about any source material that catches your
fancy.
FIRST: Anytime you are indebted/make reference to an outside source your
essay must include a Works Cited page. Without one, you have acted
unethically and have forgotten to submit the final page(s) of your essay.
IN-TEXT PARENTHETICAL CITATION (IPC)
Incorporating a source takes one of three forms, and every one of them requires an IPC:
1. Direct quotation: When directly quoting you must be absolutely accurate. Be selective
and quote only the material you need at the moment you need it. Discuss every
aspect of the quoted material, explaining it to your reader and controlling your
reader’s understanding of it. If you need to make clarification changes or omit
material from the interior of a quotation, you may use [brackets] and bracketed
ellipses […].
2. Paraphrase: Paraphrasing requires you to translate entirely into your own language a
specific passage, sentence, or point from the original source. Paraphrases do not use
quotation marks unless they contain any unique or representative terms or phrases
that belong to the original source. You can combine paraphrase and quotation.
3. Summary: Summaries encapsulate entire arguments or reference whole or large
portions of texts. They generally do not point to specific locations in texts, but
summaries still require IPCs.
Place your in-text parenthetical citation as close to the referenced material as is practical to ensure
CLARITY without unnecessarily sacrificing READABILITY.
For instance, you do not need to cram an IPC into the middle of a sentence right
after a bit of quotation when it could just as easily and clearly be placed at the end of
the sentence. Of course, you should never move on to a different source or a
significant amount of your own writing before providing an IPC. Remember, IPCs
go outside quotation marks and inside end punctuation.
An IPC contains two parts:
Part 1. Information linking the reference to the entry on your Works Cited (WC) page.
This should correspond to the first significant word of the entry on the WC. Most
often, it is the author’s last name, but it may also be a shortened title or a corporate
identity. You do not always have to include this information if you instead clearly
identify the source in your writing using an attributive tag. Consider this sentence as
an example: This is what Friedman means when he calls them “uncritical sheep ripe
for the fleecing” (12). Putting Friedman in the parenthetical citation would be
redundant.
Part 2. Information directing your reader to the location of the referenced material in the
original source. This is most often a page number. Bear in mind, though, that
electronic sources often lack pagination or other ways of precisely locating text. In
such cases, the best you can do is make sure that you have a clear WC and that you
have been accurate in using the material. If you have, your reader will be able to find
what she or he needs in the original.
THE BASIC IPC FORMAT:
(1. Word corresponding to first word on WC. 2. Location of material in original.)
WORKS CITED PAGE (WC)
Your WC occupies the final page or pages of your essay. The WC is the link between your
essay and the larger conversation of which your essay is a part. Most importantly, a WC
needs to correspond clearly to your IPCs, be consistent in its formatting, and reflect the
actual research you have done. If you read a text in electronic format you must list it that way and
not simply as a printed document. In the same vein, if you quote a source that you found within
another source, you must cite the source where you found it. You cannot pretend that you
read the original source of the quotation when you in fact relied on another’s research.
The challenge of the WC is that there are so many types of source material with so many
variations in how they are listed. That is why entire reference books and websites exist for the sole
purpose of guiding you through the details.
Become familiar with some or all of the following:
The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Just about every style (such as APA) has its
own manual. Once you know what style your discipline uses, BUY THAT
MANUAL. The 7th ed. of The MLA Handbook contains up-to-date and accurate
information.
The New Century Handbook, or something like it. You should own a style guide for quick
access to multiple citation formats as well as stylistic and grammatical advice.
Purdue University’s OWL <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/>.
Son of Citation Machine <http://citationmachine.net/>.
The internet provides a host of resources to help you with citation. Remember,
though, that the final responsibility is yours and that copying and pasting is fraught
with perils.
Leave the details to the guides. What you need to understand is the unchanging core of the
WC page: its purpose, its format, and the basic order of every entry.
FORMAT: So boringly beautiful
 Begin your WC on the page following the conclusion of your essay. Even if you only
have three lines of writing on page six, begin your WC at the top of page seven.
 Yes, WC pages are numbered continuously as part of your essay.
 DO NOT change the spacing for the WC. It should be double spaced throughout
with NO extra spaces.
 Center the words Works Cited at the top of the page. Use no wacky formatting of
any kind: no caps; no italics; no bold face; no giant font size.
 Hit return once and switch back to left justification.
 BEFORE typing a word, set your hanging indent. Click on the lower triangle in the
ruler (the one above the square) and move it one tab to the right (a one-half inch
indent).
 List your entries alphabetically by the first significant word of each entry. Articles (A,
An, The) don’t count for alphabetization. Begin each entry flush with the left margin.
 Make sure every line after the first line of each entry is indented one-half inch.
 DO NOT use bullets, numbers, spaces, or any other strategy for separating entries.
That is the purpose of alphabetizing and using the hanging indent.
 Other than handy shortened versions of common words (P for Press or U for
University) and some distinguishing notations (ed. for editor and edition), MLA
rarely uses abbreviations. DO NOT include “vol.” or “iss.” or “pg.”
 Each category of information is its own sentence. Separate each section of the entry
with a period.
Not every source offers the same identifying information, but every WC entry uses the same
order and same basic categories of information. Learn those, and you can adapt to any
source you encounter.
Generally, we think of a WC entry this way: Author. Title. Publisher. Dates and Pages.
Our goal here is to imagine more useful and adaptable categories (at once less specific and
more precise), since sometimes authors are editors, publishers are journal titles, and dates
and pages are altogether missing.
When listing a source on your WC, try to identify the following categories of information.
They should always proceed in the following order, which means if one is absent you can
simply move to the next.
1. [Responsible Entity]: This will most often be an author or authors, but it might also
be an editor or a corporate author, like The Humane Society. And then there are times
when there is no identifiable author. In those cases, you move to …
2. [Descriptive Label]: Give the full titles of works – including subtitles – on your WC.
Sometimes this portion of your WC can also be a descriptive name for the source, such
as Personal interview or Preface. Remember, if your entry begins with a title, then your
IPC should include a shortened version of that title starting with the first word and
including as many words as are necessary to identify the source clearly.
3. [Publication Information]: This category can include a lot of information and
require different formatting depending on the publication. For instance, if you are citing
an essay in an anthology, then you would include the anthology title and editors in your
publication information. Sources from books will need cities of publications and names of
publishers. Sources from journals require journal titles and volume/issue information.
This is also where you note editions, translations, and page numbers. All the pesky details
can be found in one of the guides that you keep handy. What you must remember is that this is
the section where you include all the information on where the text you are citing
appears. This used to be the last category of information in any WC entry, but we are in
a brave new digital age, and electronic sources demand their own WC territory. It also
means that we need a section in all WC entries that identifies the form (medium) of the
source. Since the same material might be available in multiple formats, you also need to
include …
4. [Access Information]: This portion of MLA citation underwent significant changes in
2009. Now, citing electronic sources is much simpler and is very similar to citing print
sources. In fact, the most important new piece of information that must be included in
all citations is the Medium of Publication. In most cases, the medium of publication
is that last piece of information in the citation (e.g., Print, Film, CD, Web). However,
in the case of Web sources, your citation requires one more piece of information, the
Date of Access. Listing the dates on which you accessed web-based materials is crucial,
as they have a tendency to change addresses and even content with alarming frequency.
Previously, you were required to include URLs for web sources. While there may be
some instances in which you still do so, for the most part they are unnecessary.
Finally, there is one citation type which you should commit to memory, since it may be
the most common citation you use as a student and literary scholar:
Full-text periodical publications accessed via an online database
(most often the subscription databases available through the library).
For source material found in online databases you must also list the Database Title
(italicized) before listing the medium of publication and the date of access. Previously,
citing materials accessed using library databases meant listing detailed information about
the point of access; mercifully, that is no longer necessary.
Here is an example of a WC entry for an electronic source accessed via a subscription
database (remember, it would be double-spaced on an actual WC):
Gumble, Barney. “The Trials and Triumphs of an Inebriated Documentarian.” Simpsonia
12.2 (2009): 145-62. Academic Search Premier. Web. 06 Mar. 2011.
1 [Responsible Entity]. 2 [Descriptive Label]. 3 [Publication Information].
4 [Access Information].
There it is. No great mystery, just a commitment to clarity, consistency, and the ongoing
conversation that is scholarly work. If you begin by understanding why you are doing
citation, then the actual citation will be much easier.