MLA is the citation and style method used by scholars in the humanities. It is one of the most widely used styles in academia, especially in English and literature. The Modern Language Association is behind MLA style, which was created in the 1950's. Make sure to check out the manual for MLA for your citations, your Works Cited page, and overall set-up for your paper.
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The following are some of the most popular source types for citing. If you have a question about a particular type of source not listed or a special case, please consult the MLA Handbook, or contact the library or Writing Center.
In-text Citations
In-text citations follow a basic format of (Last Name Page #). If your source is an online document or webpage without page numbers, you can count the paragraphs until you get to the paragraph with your quote or paraphrase. You can incorporate the author's name into the sentence itself, but you must always include a page number in parentheses.
Articles in Scholarly Journals
Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal, Volume (vol.), Issue (no.), Year, pages (pp.).
Alaei, Mahya and Saeideh Ahangari. "A Study of Ideational Metafunction in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": A Critical Discourse Analysis." English Language Teaching, vol. 9, no. 4, 2016, pp. 203-213.
Newspaper Articles
Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Newspaper Title, Day Month Year, pp. #.
Selingo, Jeffrey K. "Writing skills are rising on the list of job requirements — and falling in candidates." The Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2017, p. 3A.
Webpages
Last Name, First Name (if known), "Page Title." Website, Day Month Year, URL. Accessed Day Month Year.
"Plaigiarism and Academic Dishonesty." MLA, 2018, www.style.mla.org/plagiarism-and-academic-dishonesty/ . Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
Books
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication (if published before 1900), Publisher, Publication Date.
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis . MIT Press, 2012.
Remember, you also have to format your paper to MLA specifications. Here are the basics to keep in mind:
I can't find an author!
If no author is listed (remember, sometimes the author can be an organization!), skip it and go straight to listing the title. If the organization is both the author and the publisher, then skip the author section, start with the title, and list the organization as the publisher.
There's no date on my source.
If there is no date, skip this part of the citation. This happens often with information we find online, so use an "Accessed" statement stating when you accessed the site, i.e. Accessed followed by the day, month, and year. Ex. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
What do I do if there are no page numbers, like on a website?
If there are no page numbers available, simply leave that information out of both your in-text and Works Cited citations.
What do I capitalize when it comes to titles?
In MLA, you capitalize all words in a title, except for conjunctions (and, but, if) and articles (a, an, the), UNLESS these words are the first word in the title.