THE MLA STYLE Formatting, Citing Electronic Sources and Creating a Works Cited Page for Essays in English Studies
Why use the MLA style? We use the MLA style to acknowledge the use of outside sources in our own writing. By using the MLA style, we avoid plagiarizing another person s work.
Plagiarism Plagiarism takes many forms. 1. Cheating this is taking another person s work (such as another student s) and submitting it as our own. 2. Copying using the exact words (whether spoken or written) of another person without quotation marks so that our reader does not know that the words actually belong to someone else. 3. Stealing taking the ideas, facts, statistics, and opinions from a source and without telling our reader that these items were not original with us. 4. Some forms of plagiarism may involve violation of American copyright laws.
United States Copyright Law Authorship of materials published in the United States may be protected by copyright laws. These laws are incredibly complex, and copyright law is itself a specialty in U.S. law schools. Here is some information about copyright law in the U.S.: A Brief Introduction to the Copyright Office of the U.S. Government
Avoiding Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement So that scholars and university students do not plagiarize or violate copyright law, U.S. universities have developed complicated systems for documenting the use of sources. These systems are called research styles. A research style explains a method for acknowledging the use of the work of other writers by citing sources and providing a bibliography of sources. In the United States, many academic disciplines use their own research styles.
Various Research Styles in Higher Education See a list of research styles at Research and Documentation Online This list includes the individual research styles for business, chemistry, engineering, English, geology, history, journalism, law, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, physics, political science, and the social sciences. English students and scholars in the United States use the research style called the MLA. Sometimes an academic journal may request that a scholar submit work for publication using the Turabian style or Chicago style, which is more complicated than the MLA.
Citation and American University Traditions 1. In the United States a person s work (whether scholarship, scientific research, music, artwork, images, writing, emails, letters, computer code, graphic designs, and the like) belongs to that person, even if such objects have no commercial value. 2. In universities, research belongs to the person who creates a project and publishes results. 3. That is, the person who does the actual work, gets the credit. 4. The person who does the work may actually own the copyright to the work. 5. In universities, it is thus important to acknowledge the sources you use in your own writing because technically the sources do not belong to you. You are simply borrowing them. 6. If you borrow information from a source and cite the source in a research essay, you are engaged in the fair use of that source. 7. Fair use is borrowing the work of someone else for legitimate research and non-profit educational purposes.
What information must be cited:... whether a web-based or print-based source, cite the following information when it occurs in your essays: Quotations, opinions, and predictions, whether directly quoted or paraphrased. Statistics derived by the original author. Visuals (images or graphs or videos) in the original. Another author s theories. Case studies. Another author s direct experimental methods or results. Another author s specialized research procedures or findings. From Style for Students Online Penn State University
ABOUT THE MLA STYLE
What is the MLA Style? The MLA Style is a research format that lays out in detailed and organized form a way to assemble research materials and incorporate them into texts. This form is used by professionals as well as beginning Composition students. MLA is the abbreviation for the Modern Language Association, which is a professional association for college professors with a huge number of participating college and university professors and their departments. A committee from this organization created the MLA style and keeps it updated as research sources change, with the additions of such things as the Internet, email, databases in libraries, blogs, and other online information sources, which need to be cited as well as print sources..
The MLA Handbook, 7 th edition, is used by scholars in the United States
How do you set up an MLA-style essay? Here s is the model for your first page: Your Last Name 1 (your pages should be numbered) Your Name Professor s Name Composition II [the day followed by the month followed by the year, i.e., 26 May 2014] Title Is Centered The Title Does NOT Go in Quotation Marks The Title Is NOT Underlined The First Word and All Important Words in a Title Are Capitalized All paragraphs are indented five spaces from the left-hand margin. All pages are numbered. Works Cited page(s) are included at the end of the essay and begin a new page.
After typing a nice heading and title, what should you do? As you write, you should cite your sources. You need to tell your readers two things: 1. The exact points in your essay where the material you are using is not original with you. Here you should use an intext citation of your sources (explained below). As we have seen, source material can be summarized, directly quoted or paraphrased. 2. The exact location of where your readers can locate the information you are citing. Here you should have a list of your cited sources on the Works Cited page (explained below).
What do you need to know in order to follow the MLA style? 1. How to create in-text citations 2. How to create a Works Cited page
MLA STYLE AND IN-TEXT CITATIONS
First of all, what does it mean to cite a source? A cited source is outside material that you actually use in your essay. To use a source is to cite it. While researching a topic, you may have read other material that you did not cite. That means, you have background information, but if you do not explicitly mention that material in the essay itself through summaries, paraphrases or direct quotations, you cannot say that you cited it. Only cited materials end up on your source list on the Works Cited page. So your 3 required sources in this oral history essay need to be ones that you use in your essay.
What information should you cite? 1. Do NOT cite general information. General information is that material found on ALL websites having to do with the same topic. This kind of material is not cited because it is generally known about the subject of your research and is thus general information. 2. But YOU MUST CITE information that has very specific details or contains opinions about the topic you are writing on. Unique specific information and opinions are always cited. In this way, you give credit to the person who actually went to the trouble of assembling research, organizing the research, thinking about it, forming opinions about it, and then writing about it for others to read. To use someone else s work in your own essay without giving them credit is stealing their hard work.
What information and sources should you cite? 1. Any direct quotation from a source, that is, someone else s exact words. 2. Any opinion that you are using from a source. 3. Any unique facts, statistics that seem to rise above the level of general information
How do you cite outside sources in the MLA style? Most of the time, a citation requires a signal phrase that tells your reader your are beginning the use of a source, and parenthetical citation at the end of the use of that source to show your reader that you have stopped using that source. For instance, suppose I am using information from a website X. The poet Rupert Brooke is the most famous of all the poets of World War I. In fact, website X explains that.........
How does the signal phrase work? You ll notice that the use of an outside source begins with an indication that an outside source is being used. This is done with a signal phrase. Signal phrases tend to be written in the present tense. Here are some examples of signal phrases: Economist Jason Meredith explains that.. One website reports that... Another source notes that... Scholar Bill Smith argues instead that...
What about conflicting information? Conflicting facts are generally presented as such. So you might say, X website reports that this poet fought in the Battle of the Somme, while website Y reports that many scholars now disagree about the poet s actual participation.
What is an in-text citation? At the END of the use of a source, you should have a parenthetical abbreviation that directs your reader to the Works Cited page so that the reader can find the source you cited and learn where it is located on the internet. For instance, A website at Brigham Young University reports that Rupert Brooke participated in the evacuation of Belgium, French and British forces from Antwerp, Belgium in October 1914 ( Poets ). The abbreviation at the end of the sentence directs the reader to an entry on the Works Cited page that begins with the word Poets and there the reader can find out all about that source, including the website address on the internet.
Can you cite Wikipedia? No. Wikipedia is not considered a good source for college-level research because it is an open source website. That is, many people can simply login to Wikipedia and work on articles, go into any of the pages and change them. Vandals can cruise through pages and change dates and times and names, and you would not know. There are a lot of mischief-makers on the internet and a lot of people who want to change history and biographical facts to suit their purposes. Most websites are closed and only their authors can produce content. This is not true of Wikipedia. It s a good place to start to get an overview of a topic, but not a good source to cite. So it s best to go to an.org website. Websites with this designation in their internet address generally have serious scholars or a serious purpose. These sorts of websites often have editors so that material is not going directly up on the website but goes through an editorial process. Another type of website that may be helpful is the.edu, which are the college-level sites. These can be library sites or scholars sites. These sites may have editors that check and edit the materials before they are published online.
Should you cite paraphrased materials? So you are working on your essay, and you paraphrase some material, that is, you restate the material in your own words rather than directly quoting it. Should you cite the paraphrased materials? Yes, paraphrased material based on an outside source must be cited.
How many direct quotations from sources can be used? You must ALWAYS cite direct quotations. But your own research essay MAY NOT be a simple set of direct quotations strung together from sources. Such writing is considered very poor style. At least 80% of any college-level essay should be in your own words. So paraphrase your sources, but also cite those paraphrases.
How do you cite a direct quotation? You will need a signal phrase. That phrase needs to contain information about who is speaking in your direct quotation. After the signal phrase, you will need quotation marks, then the quotation (exactly as it appears in the original), followed by quotation marks and then the parenthetical in-text citation. For example: A website at Emory University explains that Brooke died early in the war and saw little action, so his poetry shows an enthusiasm that most soldiers and poets eventually lost as the war dragged on (Rusche).
THE MLA STYLE AND ENTRIES ON THE WORKS CITED PAGE
A Works Cited entry and its connection to the in-text citation. On the last slide, there was the following example: A website at Emory University explains that Brooke died early in the war and saw little action, so his poetry shows an enthusiasm that most soldiers and poets eventually lost as the war dragged on (Rusche). The Works Cited Entry should be: Rusche, Harry. Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915. Lost Poets of the Great War. Emory University, N.d. Web. 14 October 2013 http://www.english.emory.edu/lostpoets/. How do I know this Works Cited entry is in the correct form? I followed the MLA style for electronic citations.
Here is the MLA model to follow for Internet sources: Author [Last name first followed by comma, then first name]. Title of Article. [In quotation marks] Name of the Website [in italics].name of publisher or sponsoring institution, Date of the Article, or last update date for the entire website. Medium [Web, Email, CD-ROM, Blog, Discussion Board]. Date of Access <internet address>. Rusche, Harry. Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915. Lost Poets of the Great War. Emory University, N.d. Web. 13 October 2013 http://www.english.emory.edu/lostpoets/.
Here is the front page of the website that was created by an individual. Author and name of website No Date Shown for when the article was published
The entire website address http://www.english.emory.edu/lostpoets/ This is the address for the website about the Lost Poets of the Great War. You ll notice that if you delete the last part of the web address, you can get to the homepage of the entire, huge website at Emory University http://www.english.emory.edu/
This information tells us: 1. That there is an article by an individual author 2. On a small website that he created 3. Inside a great big site sponsored by Emory University. This happens a lot. I personally have a website called Keith s English Page. But it is housed in a huge website sponsored by Johnson County Community College.
To create a Works Cited entry you will need: 1. An author s name. If there is no author, begin the entry with the title of the article. 2. The title of the article you are referring to 3. The name of the website on which the article appears. 4. Any date about the uploading of the article (if there is no date use N.d.) 5. The sponsoring institution or publisher of the website, often found at the very bottom of the homepage. This may well be the owner of the copyright. If there is no sponsor, use N.p. which is an abbreviation for no publisher. 6. And you will need the web address for the specific page on which the information you are using appears. 7. And you will need the date you accessed the website.
The Author of an Article When creating a Works Cited entry, the author s name comes first. You should put the last name first, followed by the first name and then a period. If no author s name is given, then begin your entry with the title of the article.
The Title of the Article Even if your source does this differently, the first and all major words in a title are capitalized. Titles of articles go in quotation marks. If you are not using an article but are using research from a homepage, then you begin your Works Cited entry with the name of the website.
Names of Websites Names of websites follow the rules of capitalization of titles. The first word and all other major words are capitalized. The title of a website goes in italics.
The Sponsoring Institution This is the online equivalent of a publisher. It s the owner of the copyright or the corporation that sponsors the material you are looking at. You might see a published noted at the bottom of the article you are using. Or at the bottom of the homepage you may see something like: The American Library Association 2013. The Library Association owns the copyright and is thus the publisher or sponsoring institution of the website. The sponsoring institution may be a scholarly society, a corporation, a university, a charity. If you cannot find a sponsoring institution anywhere on the website, not even at the bottom of the homepage for the site, then use N.p. (for no publisher) in your Works Cited entry.
The Publication Date Use the date the article itself was published. It will be on the page your are getting your information from. If you cannot find a date, go to the homepage for the website itself. Scroll down to the bottom of the webpage and see if you can find a copyright date. If there are several dates, use the most recent one. If there is no date anywhere, use N.d. in your Works Cited entry to indicate that the website is undated.
The format of the material you are using After the publisher and the date, you will need to provide the format of the material. Since we are doing an Internetbased assignment, you should use Web, for the most part. However, some of your websites may be Blogs.
Date of Access This is the date you personally got something off the Internet. This is written in military dating style: The day followed by the month followed by the year, with no punctuation. For instance, 14 April 2014 This is the day you took your notes from the Internet for your research. You give this date you accessed the materials because later researchers may go to the website and find that it no longer exists. Items on the internet come and go. Information on the Internet is not the same as books in the library.
An example Information about Rupert Brooke can be found on the website Poets.org http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmpid/181
Let s say I want to use information from this page. I want to paraphrase from this the article on Rupert Brooke on Poets.org. I might put information in this form, The author of the Rupert Brooke article on Poets.org does not like Brooke s poetry. The writer states that his poetry has been dismissed as very sentimental, especially in contrast to the mature poets of the early twentieth century ( Rupert Brooke, Poets.org). I gave a long abbreviation of the source in parenthesis because I have listed several articles with the same title: Rupert Brooke. So I have to direct my readers to the particular, specific article on the Works Cited page that I am discussing.
Here is what I know about my source. 1. No author. 2. Article title: Rupert Brooke. 3. No date, but the copyright date for the entire website is 2013, which I think I will use. 4. The name of the website is Poets.org 5. I can see at the bottom of the homepage that the sponsor of the website is the Academy of American Poets. 6. The web address where my information comes from is: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmpid/181 7. I accessed the information on October 14, 2013
Now I want to put all that information in MLA style: Rupert Brooke. Poets.org. American Academy of Poets, 2013. Web. 14 April 2014 http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmpid/181. The order is: Title of article in quotation marks. Period inside the closing quotation mark. Title of the website in italics. Followed by a period. The names of websites always go in italics. The name of the sponsoring institution followed by a comma. The copyright date or the day the material was uploaded or even the last update of the entire website. The word Web followed by a period. The day I accessed the information I am citing in military dating style. All of this followed by the internet address, followed by a closing period.
YOUR OWN WORKS CITED PAGE
Your Works Cited page should contain A least 5 sources Each of those sources should appear within the essay itself. These should not simply be websites you visited or took notes from. The Works Cited page has a series of entries. The entries should be listed in alphabetical order by the first word (such as the last name of the author or the first major word in the title) on the left-hand margin. You should include Works Cited entries for photographs, emails, interviews and emails.
THE ORDER OF WORK
1. Do the research. 2. Do the writing, indicating where you used sources by noting the website addresses. 3. Once you have completed the essay, for each of the websites you actually used in your essay, create Works Cited entries. 4. After creating the Works Cited entries, return to the text of the essay and create the correct abbreviations for those Works Cited entries. 5. At the place where you used research, insert the in-text citation that refers your reader back to the correct source on the Works Cited page.
THE IN-TEXT CITATION ABBREVIATIONS
For a Works Cited Entry that begins with an author s name According to Jason Smith,....... (Smith). The word Smith in the text of the essay would refer the reader to the Smith on the Works Cited page and all the information about that source. According to one article,........ ( News ). The News would refer the reader to the Works Cited page and the reader would look for the word News on the left-hand margin and then find all the materials about that source.
According the website Poets of the Great War,.................... (Poets). The abbreviation Poets refers the reader to the Works Cited page and on the left-hand margin the reader can find the word Poets and then all the information about that source.
The Three Options for Abbreviations for the In-text Citations 1. The last name of an author, such as (Smith). 2. The first important word in the title of an article ( News ). 3. The first important word in the name of a website (Poets). A name takes no punctuation. The abbreviation for the title of an article goes in quotation marks. The abbreviation for the name of a website goes in italics.