Writing Bibliographic Citations in MLA Format
Below are examples for the most
common situations. For more detail,
consult the MLA
Style
Manual, available in the library’s Reference
collection at R 655.25 G437m.
1.
Bibliographic citations for books
2.
Bibliographic citations for articles in books
(encyclopedias, collections of essays, etc.)
3.
Bibliographic citations for printed periodical
articles (magazine, journal, and
newspaper articles)
4.
Bibliographic citations for personal interviews
5.
Bibliographic citations for electronic sources
(web pages, articles from online databases)
6.
Sample pages formatted in MLA style (title
page, etc.)
Here
is a web site with a nice overview of MLA style; try the links on the right
side of the page.
Humanities: Documenting
Sources
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BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS FOR
BOOKS |
1.
Standard citation to a book
Baxter, John L. The History of
2.
A book with an editor
Baxter, John L.,
ed. The History of
3.
Two or three authors (or editors)
Baxter, John L., Peter
Gwynne, and
Baxter, John L., and
4.
More than three authors
Baxter, John L., et
al. The History of
5.
A particular edition of a book
Hooper, Wesley, and
Karen Toliver. Calculus and Analytic
Geometry. 5th ed.
McGraw-Hill, 1978.
6.
A multi-volume set
Horecek, Leo, and Gerald
Lefkoss. Programmed Ear Training. 4 vols.
|
BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS FOR ARTICLES IN BOOKS |
1.
An article in a general encyclopedia (like Encyclopedia Britannica
or Encyclopedia
Dickinson,
If no author is given:
"Nemanya
Dynasty." Encyclopedia
2.
An article in a subject encyclopedia or other alphabetized reference
source
Tedeschi, J.D. "Interpersonal Communication." Encyclopedia of Psychology. Ed. Raymond J. Corsini.
4 vols.
Taton, Rene. "Liouville, Joseph." Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Ed. Charles Coulston Gillespie.
16 vols.
NOTE: Full publication
information (editor, number of volumes, city, publisher, year of publication)
is needed for these, but not volume or page numbers, since the sources are
already in alphabetical order.
3.
An article in an edited collection of essays
Carroll, Thomas F. "The Land Reform Issue in
the Contemporary Scene. Ed. Robert D. Tomasek. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1966.
128-168.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS TO PERIODICAL ARTICLES (from magazines, journals, & newspapers) |
1.
An article in a weekly magazine
Jeffries, Janet. "The Year in Television." Newsweek 23 Dec. 1989: 21-23.
If the article is on pages 75, 76, 84, and 87, do this:
Taylor, Martin. "A Rothko Retrospective." New Yorker 6 May 1987: 75+.
2.
An article in a monthly magazine
Crickmer, Barry. "Can We Control Spending?" Nation's Business Apr. 1982: 22-24.
3.
An article in a journal with continuous pagination (continuing from
issue to issue)
18 (1974): 725-41.
4.
An article in a journal without continuous pagination (each issue
starting at page 1)
Mangan, Doreen. "Henry Casselli: Superb
Contradictions." American Artist
38.2 (1974): 39-43.
Another method uses the month or season to locate
the issue:
Mangan, Doreen. "Henry Casselli: Superb
Contradictions." American Artist
38 (Feb. 1974): 39-43.
5.
A newspaper article
Sharn, Lori. "
If no author is listed:
"Deadly Radon More
Common Than Thought." New York
Times 13 Aug. 1989, natl. ed.: 2+.
NOTE: The above example
specifies a particular edition of the New York Times.
|
BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS FOR PERSONAL INTERVIEWS |
Start with the name of the person
interviewed.
Fife,
Bernard. Personal interview. 15 Mar. 2003.
|
BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS TO ELECTRONIC SOURCES (web pages, articles from online databases,
etc.) |
Web
Pages
Flight Deck Automation Issues. Ed. Ken Funk.
Jun. 1999.
<http://flightdeck.ie.orst.edu/FDAI/issues.html>
The
elements of the above citation are:
1.
Title of the web page
2.
Author/editor of the web page (if known)
3.
Date the web page was published or last revised (if known)
4.
Sponsor of the web page (if known)
5.
Date the web page was accessed
6.
The URL of the web page <in brackets>
For
more examples on how to cite web pages, go to this web site: http://www.mla.org
1.
Then click on MLA Style.
2.
Then click on Frequently Asked Questions About MLA Style.
3.
Then click on How do I document sources from the World Wide Web in my
works-cited
list?
Here
is EBSCOhost’s explanation on how to cite their articles:
http://bll.epnet.com/help/ehost/Modern_Language_Association.htm
1. Here’s a typical citation:
Siekman,
Philip. “GE Bets Big on Jet
Engines.” Fortune Vol. 146 Issue 13,
12/30/2002: 178B.
Available from Academic Search Elite [database
online]. EBSCOhost. Accessed
15 January 2003. <http://search.epnet.com>.
2. In the
article’s citation on EBSCOhost, you can also find the “Persistent Link to this
Article”.
It gives the most
precise URL for the article in the database by including the AN
(accession number) of
the article.
Siekman,
Philip. “GE Bets Big on Jet
Engines.” Fortune Vol. 146 Issue 13,
12/30/2002: 178B.
Available from Academic Search Elite [database
online]. EBSCOhost. Accessed 15
January 2003. <http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=8703191&db=fth>.
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SAMPLE PAGES FORMATTED IN MLA
STYLE |
1. The left, right, and bottom margins should be
1 inch.
2. The last name and page number (in the upper
right corner) should be ½ inch from the top.
3. The paper should be double-spaced.
FIRST PAGE OF A RESEARCH PAPER
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Shumway 1 Muffy Shumway Professor Smart English 325 25 January 2003 Fahren auf der Autobahn In 1974, a German group called Kraftwerk released Autobahn, an album that was very much ahead of its time. Clocking in at over 22 minutes, the song “Autobahn”… |
NEXT &
SUBSEQUENT PAGES
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Shumway 2 Afrika Bambaataa used the melody of Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” in his 1982 hit, “Planet Rock”. Kraftwerk’s musical influence has also been heard in… |
.WORKS CITED PAGE
|
Shumway 8 Works
Cited Cool, Joseph. “Kraftwerk: Synthesizer Pioneers”. Electronic Musician May
2007: 33-36. Natasha, Boris. The History of German Rock. New York: Academic Press, 2005.
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