MLA DOCUMENTATION STYLE
This handout presents a brief review of the most common forms of MLA documentation style for writers of papers in college courses in the Humanities. However, since this handout omits many types of materials, any writer should use the more complete MLA Handbook to be most accurate. The citation for this source is:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 4th ed. New York: MLA, 1995.
Standard Use of Parenthetical Documentation
When your "Works Cited" list contains only one work by the author you are citing, your citation in the body of the paper will give only the author's last name and the page number, e.g.,
Mayne Reid's 1856 novel, The Quadroon, formed the basis of Dion Boucicault's play, The Octaroon (Hart 621).
When the author's name is mentioned in the text of your paper, it is only necessary to cite the page number in parentheses, e.g.,
Flannigan recommends having students tutor their fellow students in reading skills (141).
When the "Works Cited" list contains two or more works by the same author, you must give both the author's name and the title of the work you are citing (or a shortened version of it) in your parenthetical citation, e.g.,
The rate of scientific discovery has increased exponentially in this century (Bazell, "Science" 13).
Footnotes/Endnotes
While footnotes or endnotes used to be the common form of citation, now these are used only as information notes in the MLA system for one of two purposes:
1. to provide additional information that might interrupt the flow of the paper yet is important enough to include;
2. to refer readers to sources not included in the list of works cited.
Information notes may be either footnotes or endnotes. Footnotes appear at the foot of the page; endnotes appear at the end of the paper, just before the list of works cited. For either style, the notes are numbered consecutively throughout the paper. The text of the paper contains a raised arabic numeral that corresponds to the number of the note.
e.g. TEXT
The apes' achievements cannot be explained away as the simple results of
conditioning or unconscious cueing by trainers.1
NOTE
1 For a discussion of the cueing of animals, see Wade 1349-51.
Works Cited Page (Bibliography)
All works used in the preparation of a paper must be cited on a AWorks Cited@ page that appears after the last page of the paper. Citations on this page are listed in alphabetical order according to the author=s last name. Each citation entry on your Works Cited page will use the hanging indent format (i.e., the first line is flush with the left margin and succeeding lines are indented 5 spaces).
BOOK: SINGLE AUTHOR
Hart, James D. The Oxford Companion to American Literature.5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
BOOK: TWO OR MORE AUTHORS
Marquart, James W., Sheldon Ekland Olson, and Jonathan R. Sorensen. The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
A WORK IN AN ANTHOLOGY OR COMPILATION
Moravcevich, N. "The Romanticization of the Prostitute in Dostoyevsky's Fiction." The Image of the Prostitute in Modern Literature. Ed. Pierre L. Horn and Mary Beth Pringle. New York: Unger, 1984. 53-61.
TRANSLATION
Eco, Umberto. Foucault's Pendulum. Trans. William Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt, 1989.
TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Putnam's, 1989.
---. The Kitchen God's Wife. New York: Putnam's, 1991.
A PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED ARTICLE REPRINTED IN A COLLECTION
Roberts, Sheila. "A Confined World: A Rereading of Pauline Smith." World Literature Written in English 24 (1984): 232-38. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Dennis Poupard. Vol. 25. Detroit: Gale, 1988. 399-402.
WORK CITED IS FROM ONE VOLUME ONLY OF A MULTI-VOLUME WORK
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. "Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl." 1863. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter et. al. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Lexington: Heath, 1994. 2425-33.
ARTICLE IN A SCHOLARLY JOURNAL
Hallin, Daniel C. "Sound Bite News: Television Coverage of Elections, 1968-1988." Journal of Communication 42.2 (1992): 5-24.
MATERIAL FROM AN INFORMATION SERVICE OR DATABASE
Horn, Pamela. "The Victorian Governess." History of Education 18 (1989): 333-44. ERIC EJ 401 533.
Trueheart, Charles. "Graham Greene's Private Heart." Washington [D.C.] Post April 4, 1991. NewsBank, People, April 1991, fiche 14, grids F5-7.
INFORMATION FROM CD-ROM
Russo, Michelle Cash. "Recovering from Bibliographic Instruction Blahs." RQ: Reference Quarterly 32 (1992): 178-83. Infotrac: Expanded Academic Index ASAP. CD-ROM. Information Access. Dec. 1993.
INFORMATION FROM AN ONLINE SOURCE
Angier, Natalie. "Chemists Learn Why Vegetables Are Good For You." New York Times 13 Apr. 1991, late ed.: C1. Online. Lexis/Nexis, NEWS Library; NYT File. 21 Aug. 1995.
WEB PAGE
"Schistosomaisis in U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers--Malawi, 1992." MMWR: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 30 Jul. 1993: 565-570. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Online. http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/mmwr.html 26 Jan 1996.
A FILM
A Room With a View. By E.M. Forster. Adapt. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Dir. James Ivory. Prod. Ismail Merchant. Perf. Maggie Smith, Denholm Eliot, Helena Bonham Carter, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Cinecom Intl. Films, 1985.
A FILM ON VIDEOCASSETTE
Rashomon. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. 1950. Videocassette. Embassy, 1986.