MLA Citation and
Documentation Style
Quick Tips
The Works Cited Page
The Works Cited page lists the outside
sources, or works, that you actually cite in
the paper: that is, the sources from which
you garner ideas, quote directly, summarize,
or paraphrase in the body of your paper.
Always create your Works Cited page first,
before inserting your parenthetical, in-text
citations (you’ll see why later in this lecture).
Formatting the Works Cited Page
Our handbook contains all of the specific citation
information that you’ll need for practically any type of
source material that you will ever encounter, from
books and magazines, to songs and films, lectures
and advertisements, works of visual and performing
art, and online information.
For each of your outside sources, take the time to
page through the MLA section of our handbook,
looking at the section titles until you see the one for
the type of source that you are citing. Then, follow
both the citation formula and the example provided
to cite your source correctly.
Online Help
You are free to use an online citation generator to assist you, but do
know that they often produce incorrect entries, so you’ll still have to
proofread and double-check the results.
If you’d like to try an online citation generator, one strategy would be to
first enter your data into the generator, and then look up that type of
entry in our handbook, to cross-check and verify that the online
generator has produced the correct result, in proper MLA format.
Purdue University has on online handbook for students to use, called
their Online Writing Lab (OWL). Here you’ll find the most current
citation information, arranged as it is in our handbook, by the type of
source you’re citing:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Final Check of the Works Cited
Page
Once you’ve formatted your individual entries accurately, take
another look at the sample Works Cited page in our handbook to
verify that your overall page formatting is correct.
Note that your page should be entitled “Works Cited” (but without
the quotes on your own page title), because you are
documenting—or citing—multiple original sources, or works.
Your page title should be centered at the top margin of the page.
Alphabetize all the entries by their first words.
Be sure that you’ve used a hanging indent for individual entries,
wherein the first line of each entry begins at the left margin, and
the subsequent lines of the individual entries are indented one
Tab, or 5 spaces.
In-Text Citations
After you’ve constructed your Works Cited page, it’s time to cite
your sources in the body of your paper, at the points where you
use the outside information, whether it be general ideas, quotes,
paraphrases or summaries. These are called “in-text citations”
or “parenthetical citations.”
Immediately after each piece of outside information, again, be it
an idea, quote, paraphrase, or summary, insert parentheses, and
then show where you obtained that piece of outside information
inside of those parentheses.
Again, your handbook contains all of the information you need
for citing outside sources in-text, or parenthetically, but next I’ll
show you how to master this skill easily.
In-Text Citations
This is where your having already created your
Works Cited page pays off, because you’ll use
what you wrote for each entry as you cite it
parenthetically.
What appears in parentheses after your quote,
paraphrase, or summary is the first word or
phrase from the Works Cited entry, sometimes
followed by additional information, depending
upon the type of source you’re citing.
In-Text Citations
For example, if your Works Cited entry for an online article looks like this:
O’Connor, Gary. “How to Hack Your Most Annoying Day-to-Day Tasks.” How
to Do Anything Better Guide. 2014. Web. June 1, 2015.
here’s what your in-text citation will look like in the body of your paper:
In his life-hack blog, lifestyle guru Gary O’Connor advises that people
should break down seemingly overwhelming, dreaded tasks into short work
sprints (O’Connor par.5).
Note that because the last name “O’Connor” started your Works Cited entry, that is what
should appear in the parentheses of your in-text citation. The “par.5” that follows the
writer’s last name is the paragraph in the article in which the cited information appears.
You’ll need this additional information when citing hard-copy print, in which case you cite
the page number (Smith 137), or when citing online articles and sources that have clearly
delineated paragraphs (not all of them do, as you well know).
In-Text Citations
Similarly, if you have an outside source without a writer, you still parenthetically cite the
first word or phrase of your Works Cited entry. Perhaps, for instance, you cite an
advertisement on your Works Cite page like this:
Lancôme Hydra-Intense Daily Moisturizing Potion. Marie Claire. 22.6
(June 2015): 93. Print.
In this case, here’s how your parenthetical citation will appear in the body of your paper:
At the top-right corner of the advertisement, in bold lettering, is the slogan,
“Lancôme: For the Woman Within” (Lancôme Hydra-Intense 93).
Enough of the Works Cited entry appears so that readers can flip to the Works Cited
page, skim down the ex-dented lines along the left margin, and quickly locate which
source you’re referring to here. Again, a page number is needed after the product name,
because the advertisement appears in a hard-copy publication.
Finally, when citing outside sources, be certain to always insert the final period AFTER
the parentheses, to indicate that what appears in parentheses goes with—or belongs
to—the sentence that appears before it.
Final Thoughts
As you know, a full 10% of your formal paper grades
consists of documenting and citing sources correctly,
using MLA format, so it’s well worth taking the time to do
all of this right.
Read through the assigned MLA sections in our
handbook thoroughly, and use that, along with the
information here and in other helpful spots online, such
as the Purdue OWL, to correctly format your MLA
entries.
If you do have any questions, as always, I’m very eager
and happy to help you; just send me an e-mail.