MLA format was developed as a means for researchers, students, and scholars in the literature and language fields to use a uniform way to format their papers and assignments. This uniform, or consistent, method to developing an MLA paper or assignment allows for easy reading. Today, MLA is not only used in literature and language subject areas; many others have adopted it as well.
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"The following overview should help you better understand how to cite sources using MLA eighth edition, including how to format the Works Cited page and in-text citations."
Use this MLA 8th Edition video and tutorial to help you understand and grasp MLA-style citations.
This MLA citations quiz can help you test your skills in MLA citation management.
Works and knowledge cited should be formatted using the following guidelines:
BOOKS
One Author
Moore, David L. That Dream Shall Have a Name: Native Americans Rewriting America. University of Nebraska, 2013.
Multiple Authors
Bergman, Jill and Debra Bernardi. Our Sisters’ Keepers: Nineteenth-Century Benevolence Literature by American Women.
University of Alabama Press, 2005.
Editors, Compilers, Translators
Sherman, David and Robert C. Solomon, eds. The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy. Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
Work In An Anthology
Cook, Nancy S. “Framing Class in the Rural West: Cowboys, Double-wides, and McMansions.” A Companion to the Literature and
Culture of the American West. Ed. Nicolas S. Witschi. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 213-228.
E-BOOKS
Harrison, Brady. All Our Stories Are Heretical Perspectives on Montana Literature. University
of Nebraska Press, 2009. ProQuest ebrary, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/umontana/detail.action?docID=10312878.
PERIODICAL ARTICLE
Borgmann, Albert. “Technology as a Cultural Force for Alena and Griffin.” Journal of Canadian Sociology, vol. 31, no. 3, Summer
2006, pp. 351-360.
PERIODICAL ARTICLE IN ONLINE DATABASE
Borgmann, Albert. “So who am I really? Personal identity in the age of the Internet.” AI & Society, vol. 28, no. 1, 2013, pp. 15-
20. SpringerLink, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-012-0388-0.
NEWSPAPER
McNamer, Deidre. “Our Side of the Mountain: Op-Ed.” New York Times, November 25 2007, p. 12. Gale Cengage Academic
OneFile, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A171740686&v=2.1&u=mtlib_1_1195&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1
TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE OR ORAL TRADITIONS
While MLA does not provide specific guidance on citing the traditional knowledge of indigenous elders or knowledge keepers, Lorisia MacLeod advocates including this information in your reference list as a way to actively incorporate anti-racism and anti-colonialism in scholarly writing, and offers the following MLA template and example (3):
Cardinal, Delores. Goodfish Lake Cree Nation. Treaty 6. Lives in Edmonton. Oral teaching. 4 April 2004.
Any information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on your Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text, must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry in the Works Cited List.
MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:
Specific Situations
. . . as has been discussed elsewhere (Burke 3; Dewey 21).
Source: Purdue Online Writing Lab
Hardcopy at the Reference Desk:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2016. Print.
Online Guides:
Modern Language Association MLA Style Center
The OWL overview should help you better understand how to cite sources using MLA eighth edition, including how to format the Works Cited page and in-text citation
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