MLA Documentation Style

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MLA Documentation Style

• Sandra Pesce, Librarian
• San Diego Miramar College

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What Were Going to Do

• What This tutorial will cover the basics of
  in-text and Works Cited page citations using the
  Modern Language Associations guidelines, often
  referred to as MLA Style.
• Why Your instructors may require you to follow
  this style (or something similar) when you quote
  other authors in your papers. Also, it gives your
  papers a consistent look, and makes it easier for
  your readers to understand what youve written.
• How Explanations and active links will guide you
  through this tutorial.

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Whats a Citation?

• No, were not talking about a parking ticket or a
  moving violation.
• A citation is a brief description of an
  information source (like an article, book, or web
  site). It includes such items as
• the authors name, article title, publication
  title, volume, issue, page(s), and date of
  publication.

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What is a Style?

• A style is a set of guidelines or a template for
  formatting the citations of sources youve come
  across in your research and used in your term
  paper.
• Using a style communicates to your reader that
  you used other peoples work to support your
  findings, and makes it easy for your reader to
  find the sources you used.

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Why Styles?

• When you use a style, you apply specific design
  rules to your paper. In doing so, you give your
  paper
• Uniformity For example, all in-text citations
  are enclosed in parentheses, with the author name
  followed by a page number (Smith 48).
• Consistency For example, titles of all journal
  articles are enclosed in quotation marks.
• Readability For example, your reader always
  knows to look in the same part of a citation for
  author names.
• Authenticity The better you describe your
  sources, the better you can prove to your reader
  they are real.
• Reliability Your reader can find the full text
  of the exact source you used, to read it for
  herself.

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Life Without A Style Guide

• Have you ever tried to bake a cake from scratch
  without a recipe?
• What you finally end up with may confuse your
  audience.

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What is MLA?

• The Modern Language Association is a group of
  English and foreign language teachers. Its style
  guide, the MLA Handbook For Writers of Research
  Papers, is used by many teachers as a standard
  for research papers.
• Many other style guides exist, including the
  American Psychological Association (APA) and the
  Chicago Manual of Style. More style guides are
  found at
• http//www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/list.html .

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Vocabulary

• Here are some major concepts to keep in mind
• In-text Citation in the body of your paper
• Works Cited Citation at the end of your paper
• Formatting how the text looks
• Punctuation where the markings go
• Capitalization thE importanCe of BeiNg cOnsiStenT
• Citation Machine when to use one

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In-Text Citation

• This citation appears in the body of your paper.
• Parts of an in-text citation include
• Optional signal phrase authors name
• Required parenthetical citation (page number in
  parentheses)
• Heres an example with a signal phrase
• According to Sharon Brodie, energy drinks could
  be harmful to young children and exposure should
  be minimized (C3).
• Heres an example without a signal phrase,
  putting authors last name and page number in
  parentheses
• Energy drinks could be harmful to young
  children and exposure should be minimized (Brodie
  C3).

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Works Cited Citation

• This citation is found at the end of your paper,
  on a separate page, called the Works Cited page.
  This citation gives full information about the
  source used in the body of your text.
• The format of this citation will vary depending
  on the source (book, article, web site), which is
  why a style guide is necessary. Heres the full
  citation for the sample in the previous slide
• Brodie, Sharon. To Your Health Be Cautious of
  Energy Drinks.
•  Maryland Gazette  Glen Burnie, Md. 12 
  Oct. 2005, C3. 
• ProQuest Newsstand. ProQuest.  San Diego
  Miramar College
• Library/LRC, San Diego, CA. 14 Nov. 2005
  lt http//www.proquest.com/gt.

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Formatting Matters

• All text on the Works Cited page should be in the
  same font family and size. If you copy and paste
  citations from web pages or other documents, make
  sure your end product looks uniform by doing the
  following
• copy the selected text from a document
• go to your new Works Cited page and use Paste
  Special and pick unformatted text
• once youve pasted a whole page of citations
  together like this, you can Select All and
  reformat the whole page at one time instead of
  each individual citation as you go.

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Punctuation Punch

• Make sure periods, commas, and colons are all in
  the correct place.
• Check the location of any special characters,
  like ltangle bracketsgt around URLs.
• Always end the citation with a period.
• When in doubt, check your work against
• examples in a style guide!

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Capitalization

• Per MLA style, you should capitalize the first
  letter of
• an authors first and last name,
• the first word of a works title,
• major words (not articles like a, an, the)
  within the title of a work,
• the publisher name,
• the place of publication.

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Citation Machine

• Some electronic article databases,
• like ProQuest, have a really neat
• feature that will create citations
• automatically.
• You tell it what style guide to use and it will
  pull the descriptive information from the article
  for you and build the citation. Each product does
  this differently, so check the help screens in
  the product you are using. Most importantly, be
  sure to compare the finished product against a
  real style guide. A citation machine is helpful
  when you dont know what information is relevant
  to put into the citation, however, you still need
  to check the accuracy of the citation formatting
  against a style guide.

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Take a Closer Look

• Go to the following web site to see a sample
  paper http//www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanitie
  s/sample.html
• Open the sample humanities paper.
• Look at the overall formatting of the manuscript,
  including margins, line spacing, indents,
  capitalization, and punctuation.
• Look at the in-text citations.
• Look at the Works Cited page.

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Further Information Books

• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
• By Joseph Gibaldi, 6th Edition.
• Important Chapters
• Chapter 4 Format of the Research Paper
• Chapter 5 Preparing the List of Works Cited
• Table of contents
• Sample citations
• Chapter 6 Citing Sources in the Text
• Table of Contents
• Sample references
• Appendix B Endnotes Footnotes

• Research and Documentation in the Electronic Age
• By Diana Hacker, 3rd Edition.
• Important Chapters
• Part IV Documentation Styles
• In-Text Citations
• Directory
• Sample citations/references
• List of Works Cited/References
• Directory
• Sample citations/references
• Manuscript Format
• Sample Paper
• Companion Web Site
• http//www.dianahacker.com/resdoc

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Further Information Web Sites

• Companion to Research and Documentation
  http//www.dianahacker.com/resdoc
• This site has citation examples and sample
  papers.
• Purdue University OWL
• http//owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/i
  ndex.html
• This site has more detail on MLA format.
• Chapman University Libraries page
  http//www1.chapman.edu/library/reference/styles.h
  tml
• This site has links to citation machines and
  style guides.

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Activity

• How much do you remember from this tutorial?
• Match wits with the computer and find out!
• Go to Rags to Riches
• (Clicking the link will open a new window.)
• Have Fun!