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MLA Style Guide

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PREPARING THE LIST OF WORKS CITED

The Works Cited list is just what the name indicates: a list of works you have actually cited in your paper. The following offer samples for entries in the Works Cited. Not all possibilities are included in the list. If you need more information, use the MLA Handbook, 7th edition, go to www.mla.org and click on FAQ (good information here concerning internet source citations).

The Works Cited page normally begins on the page following your last page of text. For ex., if your paper ends in the middle of page 12, move to page 13 to begin typing your Works Cited. Number this page as you do the others and center the title 'Works Cited'. Keep your word processing program on double-space; do not add any extra spaces between entries.

Appearance of Entries: Use hanging indention when preparing each entry, which means that the first line of each entry should begin at the left margin. Indent second and subsequent lines of that entry 5 space or 1/2 in. See p. 131 in the MLA Handbook for appropriate layout of the Works Cited page.

Arrangement of Entries: Arrange sources in your Works Cited list alphabetically by author's last name. If no author is listed, alphabetize by first important word in the title (not "A," "An," or "The").

**Please note in the following examples it is assumed that these are print resources.

Fairbanks, Carol. Prairie Women: Images in American and Canadian Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.

Print.

Berry, Jason, Jonathan Foose, and Tad Jones. Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New

Orleans Music since World War II. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986. Print.

For more than three authors, name only the first followed by et al.

Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. 1920. New York: Appleton, 1974. Print.

Treat, Nola, and Lenore Richards. Quantity Cookery. 4th ed. Boston: Little, 1966. Print.

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Men. 3rd ed. New York: Scribner, 1985. Print.

---. Little Women . 3rd ed. New York: Scribner, 1985. Print.

Note that the author's name is not repeated, but is represented by three dashes (---) followed by a period (see 5.3.4 in the MLA Handbook)

Lazard, Naomi. "In Answer to Your Query." The Norton Book of Light Verse . Ed. Russell Baker.
New York: Norton, 1986. 52-53. Print.

A MULTIVOLUME WORK

Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. 2nd ed. 2 vols. New York: Ronald, 1970. Print.

Chiappini, Luciano. "Este, House of." Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia. 1974 ed. Print.

When citing less familiar reference books, give full publication information.

Trainen, Isaac N., et al. "Religious Directives in Medical Ethics." Encyclopedia of Bioethics .
Ed. Warren T. Reich. 4 vols. New York: Free, 1978. Print.

"Witch." Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. Print.

When citing familiar works, do not give full publication information. Only edition and year are needed.

United States. House. Committee on the Budget. The Balanced Budget Amendment: Hearings

before the Committee on the Budget . 102nd Cong., 2nd sess. Washington: GPO, 1992. Print.

CONTINUOUSLY PAGED:

Santley, Robert S. "The Political Economy of the Aztec Empire." Journal of Anthropological Research 41

(1985): 327-37. Print.

ISSUES PAGED SEPARATELY (e.g., Each issue begins on p. 1):

Winks, Robin W. "The Sinister Oriental Thriller: Fiction and the Asian Scene." Journal of

Popular Culture 19.2 (1985): 49-61. Print.

If a journal only uses issue numbers, treat the issue number as a volume number.

ARTICLE FROM A MAGAZINE

PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK OR TWO WEEKS:
Samuelson, Robert J. "The Virtue of Gridlock." Newsweek 14 Sept. 1992: 50. Print.

PUBLISHED EVERY MONTH OR TWO MONTHS:
Frank, Michael. "The Wild, Wild West." Architectural Digest June 1993: 180+. Print.

If the article is not printed on consecutive pages, write only the first page number and a plus sign. Do not give the volume and issue numbers even if they are listed.

SIGNED:
Reinhardt, Uwe E. "Universal Coverage, It's Now or Never." New York Times 29 June 1994, late ed.: A23. Print.

UNSIGNED:
"Pharmacy Discounts Will Help Elderly." Herald and Review [Decatur, IL] 24 July 2001: A5. Print.

AN EDITORIAL

If the editorial is unsigned begin with the title:

"The Declining Dollar." Editorial. New York Times 28 June 1994: A16. Print.

If the editorial is signed begin with the author's name:

Zuckerman, Mortimer B. "Welcome to Communicopia." Editorial. US News and World Report

1 Nov. 1993:116. Print.

A REVIEW

Quandt, William B. Rev. of Middle East - Iran's Economy under the Islamic Republic, by

Jahangir Amuzegar. Foreign Affairs 73 (1994): 180-81. Print.

INTERVIEW

Only three pieces of information are needed: the name of the subject, the type of interview (usually "personal," "telephone," or "email"), and the date of the interview.

Anderson, John J. Personal interview. 29 Sept. 2003.

King, Stephen. E-mail interview. 15 Sept. 2003.

FILM OR VIDEO/DVD RECORDING

Be sure to identify whether you're working with a videocassette or DVD. Include the director, main performers, original release date of the film, followed by the video/DVD distributor, and year (if you're renting the film, this information will not be on the video/DVD itself; you'll need to copy it from the display cover).

Nosferatu. Dir. F. Murnau. Perf. Max Schreck, Alexander Granach, Gustav Von Wagenheim,

and Greta Schroeder. 1922. Alpha Video, 2001. Film.

Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh. 1960.

Universal, 1999. Film.

MATERIAL FROM THE INTERNET OR A FULL-TEXT DATABASE

Information you access from your computer - whether it's through a subscription service (such as Lexis-Nexis or Ebsco, etc.) or the Internet, must be cited such that your readers know exactly where and when you acquired it. An article from a periodical you held in your hand in the library is cited differently than that same article acquired online, and this must be made clear in your Works Cited. The 7th edition of the MLA Handbook (sec. 5.6.1) offers an explanation of proper citing if such sources.

Subscription service citations follow a format that differs from online journals/periodicals as well as Internet citations. The following are examples of citations based on databases accessible at the CCSU Burritt Library.

FOR ACADEMIC SEARCH PREMIER:

Bartlett, Nancy H., Paul L. Vasey, and William M. Bukowski. "Is Gender Identity in

Children a Mental Disorder?"Sex Roles 43 (2000): 753. 35 pp. Academic Search Premier. Web.

29 Sept. 2008.

FOR JSTOR:

McMichael, Anthony. "Population, Environment, Disease, and Survival: Past

Patterns, Uncertain Futures."Lancet 30 (2002): 1145-48. JSTOR. Web. 5 June 2006.

For LEXIS NEXIS:

Serant, Claire. "JIT's Hungary Plant is Off to a Good Start." Electronic Buyers News (April 17, 2000): 102

Business and Industry. LexisNexis. Web. 30 Sept. 2005.

THE INTERNET:

MLA has recently updated their guidelines for citing World Wide Web sources. An entry for a non-periodical publication on the Web usually contains most of the following in sequence.

1. Name of the author, compiler, director, editor, narrator, performer, or translator of the work.
2. Title of the work.
3. Title of the overall website.
4. Version or edition used.
5. Publisher or Sponsor of the site, if not available use 'n.p'.
6. Date of publication (day, month, year, as available) if not available use 'n.d'.
7. Publication medium (Web).
8. Date of access (day, month, year)

Examples:

"New Britain, Connecticut." Map. Google Maps, Web. 15 May 2008.

Salda, Michael N., ed. The Cinderella Project. Version 1.2. University of Southern Mississippi, Oct. 2005.

Web. 15 May 2008.

Lessig, Lawrence. "Free Debates: More Republicans call RNC." Lessig 2.0. n.p., 4 May 2007. Web. 15 May

2008.

DOCUMENTING SOURCES

In your research paper, you must point out exactly what you have taken from each source named in the "Works Cited" and exactly where in that source you located the information.

The most practical way to supply this information is to insert a brief parenthetical acknowledgement in your paper wherever you incorporate another's words, facts, or ideas. Usually the author's last name and a page reference are enough to identify the source and the specific location from which you borrowed material. If the work is listed by title, use the title, shortened or in full.

Place the parenthetical reference as near as possible to the material it documents, preferably at the end of a sentence. The parenthetical reference precedes the concluding punctuation mark.

Material from body of research paper with parenthetical reference, For example:

A 1983 report found "a decline in the academic quality of students choosing teaching as a career" (Hook 10).

Article as it would appear in the "Works Cited":
Hook, Janet. "Raise Standards of Admission, Colleges Urged." Chronicle of Higher Education

4 May 1983: 1+. Print.

When authors' names are mentioned in the body of the paper, use only page numbers in the parenthetical reference. For example:

Kenneth Clark raised some interesting questions concerning artistic "masterpieces" (1-5, 12-13).

Book as it would appear in the "Works Cited":
Clark, Kenneth. What Is a Masterpiece? London: Thames, 1979. Print.

If you're quoting a source within a source, that is to say the information you're citing is not located where it originally appeared, indicate this by using 'qtd. in' (for "quoted in") in your parenthetical citation.

George Cukor once told F. Scott Fitzgerald, "I've only known two people who eat faster than you and I, and they are both dead now" (qtd. in Latham 39).

If you are quoting more than 4 fully typed lines, ask yourself whether you really need the entire quote (as a general rule, your paper should contain about 10% direct quotes; the rest of the sources used should be paraphrased). A blocked quote means that:

1. The entire quote is indented 10 spaces from the left only and double spaced.
2. Quotation marks are omitted.
3. The author and/or page number are parenthetically cited 2 spaces after the period .

If you need to leave out words in an exact quote, use ellipses - a series of 3 periods with a space between each (. . . ). Your professor may also prefer that you place square brackets around all the ellipses  you insert in quotations (see MLA Handbook 3.7.5). Do not use ellipses if you are paraphrasing or summarizing!