MLA Style Guide for sources, documentation, quotations October 2001 This style sheet gives you guidelines on writing procedures for term papers produced in English. Universities, international journals, and publishing houses tend to adopt the MLA guidelines. Consult the MLA website ("MLA Style") for current tips: www.mla.org Acknowledging your sources You must acknowledge the sources used for your paper. This includes any material which has assisted you in the writing of your paper, from books and articles to films, letters and interviews. Acknowledge not only the texts you actually quote, but also those which you paraphrase, and those which have significantly influenced your ideas or your argument. As you do your research, make a habit of keeping careful track (on note cards or computer) of the publication details of the books you consult and the page numbers of passages you plan to use as quotations. This will save you having to go back to the library in search of the information later. The two forms of acknowledgement you will need to provide in your paper are a bibliography and parenthetical references in your text. The system of parenthetical references has become conventional in place of the older system of footnotes or endnotes. Bibliography At the end of your essay you should always include a section entitled Bibliography, which is a list of all the material consulted or quoted in the course of writing your essay. List all works in alphabetical order according to the author's surnames (for anonymous works, alphabetize by the first main word of the title). In general, the following information should be presented for each entry, in the following order: For books: For articles: 1. Author's name [surname first] 1. Author's name [surname first] 2. Title of book, in italics 2. Title of article, in quotation marks 3. Name of editor, translator, or compiler [if applicable] 3. Name of journal, in italics 4. Edition used [if applicable] 4. Volume number of journal 5. Number of volumes [for multi-volumed works] 5. Issue number of journal [if applicable] 6. Place of publication, name of publisher, and date 6. Date 7. Page numbers [for book essay] 7. Page numbers Here are some sample bibliography entries, showing exactly how to present information for various kinds of source material. Take particular note of the punctuation used: * For single-volume books:
2 Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. Humm, Peter, et al., eds. Popular Fictions. London: Methuen, 1987. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. * For multi-volumed books: Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1923. * If you cite just one volume of a multi-volumed book: Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1923. 4 vols. * For editions of literary works: Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London: Methuen, 1982. * For anonymous works: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Trans. G. N. Garmonsway. 2nd ed. London: Dent, 1972. * For articles or essays in books or selections from anthologies: Hamilton, M. P. "The Meaning of the Middle English Pearl." Middle English Survey: Critical Essays. Ed. Edward Vasta. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame Press, 1965. 13-26. * For articles in journals: Kolodny, Annette. "The Feminist as Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 2 (1975): 822-32. * For articles in newspapers: Cowie, Peter. "Olivier at 75 Returns to Lear." New York Times 1 May 1983: E1-2. * For interviews: Iser, Wolfgang. Personal interview. 20 September 2001. * For reviews: Craig, Patricia. "After Such Knowledge." Rev. of The Book of Evidence, by John Banville. Times Literary Supplement 31 Mar. 1989: 344. * For films: Macbeth. Dir. Roman Polanski. Columbia Pictures, 1971. * For articles in a reference work: Johnson, Peder J. "Concept Learning." Encyclopedia of Education. 1971. or
3 "Traquair, Sir John Stewart." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11th ed. 1911. (Note: No volume or page numbers are needed.) * For Internet sources: Maureen McClarnon, review of T.C. Boyle's "The Tortilla Curtain." http://altx.com/io/tortillacurtain.html * For CD-ROM sources: "Alice Walker." Encarta Africana. CD-ROM. Microsoft, 1999. For more examples and general information about how to prepare a bibliography, see Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 4th ed. (New York: MLA, 1995), The St Martin's Handbook, (1995), or The Bedford Handbook (1998), available for copying in AR-H 214. Parenthetical references Your bibliography will provide a list of the material you have consulted, but you also need to show exactly where in your paper your borrowings have been integrated. The best way of doing this is to insert brief parenthetical references in your paper wherever you make use of another writer's words, facts or ideas. These in-text citations should include the minimum amount of information your reader will need to identify the source in your bibliography. At the very least it must include the page numbers from which you have quoted: Gilbert and Gubar argue this point at length, maintaining that Nelly Dean is "patriarchy's paradigmatic housekeeper" (291). The page reference in parentheses here - (291) - is sufficient to identify your source: you have already provided the authors' names, and your reader will find the full bibliographic details of Gilbert and Gubar's book by consulting your bibliography. At other times you may need to supply the author's name in a parenthetical reference: The novel Wuthering Heights introduces us to "a world where men battle for the favors of apparently high-spirited and independent women" (Gilbert and Gubar 249). If you have included more than one work by a particular author in your bibliography (for instance, two books by Raymond Williams), you will need to specify the title of the one from which you are quoting: It can be argued that Dickens' Hard Times is ultimately "more a symptom of the confusion of industrial society than an understanding of it" (Williams, Culture and Society 107). It is conventional to follow quotations from poems by a parenthetical reference to line numbers cited, and quotes from Shakespearean plays by a reference to the act, scene, and line numbers cited (see the example below, in the section Mechanics of Presenting Quotations). List the editions you are using in the bibliography. Using Quotations from Secondary Literature
4 In general, be sparing in your use of quotations from other critics. When you do include them, do so either as a touchstone for the argument in your essay - in other words, respond to them in some way - or as an illustration of a point you have made. Never use them simply as a substitution for your own argument. Plagiarism Failure to acknowledge your sources is not only poor scholarship; it may also constitute plagiarism. Plagiarism is the use of other people's words without quotation marks, as if those phrasings were your own. Sometimes this might be unintentional, but it is your responsibility to keep track of your source material, and to acknowledge any phrases or quotations you have picked up from your reading. Mechanics of Presenting Quotations Poetry Verse quotations of a single line or part of a line should be incorporated, within quotation marks, as part of your own text: In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Anthony says of Brutus: "This was the noblest Roman of them all" (5.5.68). Longer quotations of poetry should be set off from the main text and indented. The line arrangement and spelling should be reproduced exactly as they appear in your source. Thus: Crashaw begins "The Weeper" with a series of metaphors: Haile, Sister Springs, Parents of Silver-footed rills! Ever bubling things! Thawing Crystall! Snowy hills! Still spending, never spent; I meane Thy faire eyes, sweet Magdalene. (ll. 1-6) Prose Prose quotations of four lines or less should either be incorporated into your syntax: "This is not," wrote Toni Morrison near the conclusion of Beloved, "a story to pass on" (337). or introduced with a colon: Critics have puzzled over the interpretation of Morrison's ambiguous statement in the last chapter of Beloved: "This is not a story to pass on" (337). For longer quotes, set off the quotation and provide it with extra indentation: Defoe opens Moll Flanders with a pseudo-autobiographical narration: My true name is so well known in the records or registers of Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not
5 to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work (22). Titles of Works To be italicised: Wuthering Heights (book) Hamlet (play) The Waste Land (long poem) PMLA (journal) The New York Times (newspaper) The Big Chill (film) In quotation marks: "Kubla Khan" (poem) "The Dead" (short story) "The Feminist as Critic" (article or essay) "Allusion" (encyclopedia article) "Politics in the Work of Brian Friel" (unpublished dissertation) Common Abbreviations cf. confer (= "compare") dir. director / directed by ed. edition / edited by eds. editors et al. et alii (= "and others") ff. "and the following pages" l., ll. line, lines n., nn. note, notes n.b. nota bene (= "note well" [that...]) n.d. no date of publication given n.p. no place or no publisher given p., pp. page, pages passim throughout rev. revised / revised by; review rpt. reprint, reprinted sic thus in the source ("sic" is used most often when there is an error in the source) trans. translated by UP University Press (as in "Oxford UP", "U of Chicago P") Remember that even in the age of word-processors it is still considered "proper" style to indent (five spaces) the first line of every paragraph and make no additional spacing between paragraphs (but 1½-spacing between lines is permissible). See the format of the sample research essays, MLA style, in St Martin's Handbook (646-664) or the Bedford Handbook (616-640).