MLA Format: A Brief Introduction
When drawing from other sources it is required that you give credit to the people from whom
you've borrowed the information. Taking another's ideas and passing them off as your own is
disrespectful and it's cheating. For this reason, it's important not only to cite, but to cite
properly.
There are two citation formats that are most popular: that of the Modern Language Association
(MLA) and the American Psychology Association (APA). MLA is most often used in English
and other Liberal arts classes which focus on literary sources. APA is most often used in
psychology and other social sciences classes and their focus is on how recent your research is.
Think of the citation format as a collection of components.
The components are the same in both formats but their focus is different.
Citation Format:
There is a basic rule for the order in which information components are arranged:
Author. "Title." Source. Publication Info. Date.
In-Text Citations:
When you use MLA, the sources you are relying upon are judged by the scholarly abilities of
the writer more than currency of the source. When referring to a text, it may have been written
in 1328, thus the date is not the most important information, but rather the credibility of the
author. Thus, when doing in-text citation, the information reflected is the author and the page
the information was pulled from:
For example:
Tucker claims many people do not believe bilingual education works (54).
**or:
Many people do not believe that bilingual education works (Tucker 54)
If you have more than one source by the same author you will need to include more information.
In “Putting English First,” Tucker discusses the complexity of California’s Proposition
227 (54-60).
Proper format requires that quotation marks are put around articles. Books, movies, and
pamphlets are underlined.
Punctuation rules are important here. Periods and commas always go inside the quotation
marks. No exceptions.
The Works Cited Page:
In MLA format, you use a Works Cited list rather than references or a bibliography. This
means that you do not list every source you read. You only list the works which are cited within
the paper.
It is possible to read through forty sources in your attempt to decipher a particularly difficult
passage in Homer's Odyssey, but it's time-consuming and confusing to list every book you pick
up and leaf through, especially if you only used ten of them. Instead, you need list only those
sources you have actually quoted, paraphrased, or referred to directly within the paper itself.
Hence the name: Works Cited.
It is extremely important that you understand that the Works Cited page is an integrated part of
your paper. This is the cross-referenced list of your sources and your paper is incomplete
without it. Many readers of academic texts flip back and forth between the paper and the Works
Cited page as they read so as to make more sense of the scope of your research.
Instead of creating the Works Cited page as a separate document at the end of your paper, work
on it throughout the writing process: Cite your sources as you take notes and make sure you
write down the page numbers for all direct quotes!!
Formatting your Works Cited Page:
In your works cited page, there are specific guidelines you must keep in mind:
 The sources are listed alphabetically by the first component of information. This
means by author unless there is no author listed for a source. If you do not have an
author, then use the first important word in the title (not a, an or the)
 The works cited page is part of your paper, not a separate project. Insert a page
break, and keep it going as you work on the rest of the paper. The format must match,
as well. If the paper is double-spaced, 12 point font, so is the Works Cited page.
 No fancy fonts
 No bullets or numbers
 Use a hanging indent for your works cited page. This will keep the citations visually
separate from each other. Do not use white space between entries. (found on the toolbar
under Format-->Paragraph-->Special-->hanging)
 Do not insert hard returns in the lines of the entries. Type them as though they are
one line of information If you have a long URL, type it as one line and let the computer
break it up for you.
Why do we have to know this stuff?
It’s important to understand citation format because the online helping tools such as easybib,
Noodletools, and Citation Machine don’t always get it exactly right.
There are important little details that these online helpers don’t tell you about, like whether you
underline or use italics, Which words must (and must not) be capitalized, how many spaces to
use between punctuation, how to properly cite two sources by the same author or two sources
with the same title but different authors.
These are very important considerations and they affect not only your grade, but your
credibility.
For help with formatting specific sources use your Writer’s Handbook, ask your teacher or
librarian, or try the following online resources:

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http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq
http://Owl.English.Purdue.edu