Please note that italics should really only be used to signify foreign langauge usage and nowhere else in a properly formated MLA research paper. Use of italics in this article is strictly meant to set off cerrtain passages, such as this one, from the rest of the text.
The Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for writing formal essays is the most commonly used among university students. Most (probably 99%) Composition 101 and 102 professors will prefer (require) it, regardless of their students’ chosen disciplines and almost all humanities disciplines (save history, which uses the Chicago or Turabian style, and psychology and other social sciences, which use the American Psychological Association, APA, style) will use the MLA format for research paper writing and documentation. This makes it important for the average college student to have, at the very least, a grasp on what MLA style is, for use in their general education courses, even if they are majoring in tropical plant biology.
The easiest way to set up a research paper in MLA style (in any discipline style, really, but MLA especially) is to follow the five paragraph essay format. While middle school and high school language arts teachers will use this format as a strict rule, college writers should simply use it as a framework for structuring an essay especially if you find yourself within the sect of the population who only writes because some professor is forcing them to.
With the five paragraph format, your essay will have, logically, five parts: introduction, claim, primary support, secondary support, and conclusion. The description implies that each part should be one paragraph, and this is true when following it strictly. However, most college level research papers will have a minimum word count and for longer papers, even papers three or four pages in length, five paragraphs simply would not be appropriate. This five paragraph format is also helpful in organizing your research.
Depending on the subject of your paper, you may, or may not, already know what your primary and secondary supports will be. Let’s assume, for the purpose of this lesson, that you know enough about your claim that you know your supporting information, just need to do some research to get to the “meat” of the matter, as it were. One common mistake that writers make is to wait until their paper is complete before adding in documentation, both in-text and a Works Cited page. It is far easier to do this first, before you even start to write. As you pull information from your outside reference sources, document it. 3×5 note cards are great for this. For each reference, have a note card with all of the Works Cited information (which we will cover later). Even if you prefer to collect all of your research material in a spiral bound notebook or type as you read, you should still comprise your Works Cited as you go. Then all that is left in the end is to alphabetize.
Each time you jot down a note while you are reading your references, write down the page number you are reading. If you are reading from a website, make an educated guess as to which page you are on, or better yet, print off all the pages you are using and number them, then use those numbers in your in-text documentations. Documenting research from the internet is still based a lot on guesswork; as long as you provide your audience with as much information as possible to track down the source should they want to, you have done all that is asked of you.
Once you have done all the research you are going to do, you are ready to start writing. You will find as you write that having your sources documented before you start writing will make the whole process flow much more quickly. At this point there are several things to remember:
Anytime you quote from a book, website, magazine, or other outside resource, or anytime you paraphrase a large passage (the rule of thumb is 25 words or more, but use your best judgment; it’s better to over cite than miss something and be accused of plagiarism), you should include an in-text citation. There are two ways to do this:
According to Leslie Rule, “Researchers believe that some deaths are more likely to result in hauntings” (92).
“Researchers believe that some deaths are more likely to result in hauntings” (Rule, 92).
The first method of documentation is referred to as a signal phrase. This is the preferred method, for “flow” purposes (that is to say, the paper will flow more smoothly and be less choppy), however if you are using several quotes from the same source in various parts of the paper, this may become daunting and redundant, in which case you would use the parenthetical citation (the second example). Both are acceptable.
If you are quoting a passage that takes up more than four lines (in your paper, not in the reference itself), it should be sectioned off in what is called a block quote. A block quote can be documented in both of the ways a standard quote can be, with a signal phrase or with a parenthetical citation. The difference with a block quote is that if you chose to use a signal phrase, you will use a colon in place of a comma to separate the phrase from the quote –
Mort Castle writes:
It’s reality’s “what is?” not imagination’s “what if?” that can transform horror premise into horror story. It takes reality – heaps of it – to create and populate a story realm that gives readers the frights royale. It takes settings that have the reality of Lincoln, Neb.; Tucson, Ariz.; or Grenada, Miss. It takes breathing, thinking, feeling, story folks who are as real as your Uncle Albert … (73).
A block quote does not use quotation marks, the extended margins indicate that it is a direct quote. A block quote with a parenthetical citation is set up exactly the same except that “Mort Castle writes:” would be exchanged for (Castle, 73)*.
Paraphrased information is a little harder to cite, in-text. A good principle to follow is to cite at the end of a paragraph, unless you are paraphrasing from multiple sources within the body of the same paragraph (in which case you must use your best judgment and document the best you can at the end of each source):
While some people subscribe to the belief that fiction must be believable, that is not necessarily the case. In order to be “good,” fiction simply must be credible. Readers should not finish a passage and comment that “that could never happen.” They should put down a book, having read a passage, and say, “I can definitely see that happening, in that situation” (Castle, 73)*.
If you are writing a paper in which you are only using one reference or where you are using one more several times, sequentially, throughout the paper, you can omit the author’s name on subsequent citations: “[…] story folks who are as real as your Uncle Albert…” (Castle, 73) “Don’t use any of these stereotypes” (75). However, if you were to incorporate a second source between these two quotes, you would then have to include Castle for the information taken from page 75.
Formatting
Formatting, especially of punctuation, is important in any documentation style, and each of them has its own rules regarding punctuation. In the MLA style of in-text citation, the punctuation (almost always a period) is always to the right of the parenthesis. Within the parenthesis, the author’s name (or one or two words that will identify the title of a work with no author listed) comes first, followed by a comma then the page number or numbers from where the information was found. If the information was taken from more than one page, the page numbers should be separated only by a single dash mark, with no spaces (74-75). If the information was taken from non-sequential pages (something that is not at all common but does happen occasionally, and should only be documented in one citation in the case of a direct quote), separate page numbers with a comma (74-75,78).
To properly format your Works Cited page, center the words Works Cited at the top of the page. Then, highlight only your citations, not “Works Cited,” and select Format – Paragraph at the top of the page. The Works Cited page should be single spaced with a double hard-return between entries. The first line of each entry should be flush with the left margin and any subsequent lines should be indented one tab space (one half inch or five spaces).
While you still have all of your entries highlighted, find the two triangles on the ruler at the top of the page. Click on the small square below the bottom triangle and drag it to the half inch mark (consequently, this process, up to this step, is also how you create the indentation for a block quote), then drag the top triangle back to the 0 inch mark. This will put all hard returns against the left margin and all soft returns (returns made automatically by the computer when you reach the right margin) will be indented to the half inch mark.
Each discipline has standards on how to format the headers and or footers of a research paper and, unfortunately for students who struggle with writing as it is, these standards are different for each and every discipline and style. In MLA, only the header is used. Footnotes and endnotes are not used in MLA style. The header should be right justified and should include your last name and the page number, no punctuation (see illustration). To do this, double click in the margin at the top of the page, or select View – Headers and Footers from the menu bar. This will grey out the body of your paper and place your cursor in a dashed box a the top of the page. From the tool bar at the top of the page (the same place you would find the buttons for bold, underline, etc.) select the icon for “right justify” and type your last name and a space. You will notice a new tool bar has appeared; on that bar find the icon that represents “insert page number” and click it. This will add page numbers, in order, to the top right corner of every page of your paper.
Works Cited
I always set up my Works Cited page first, before I do any writing, that way I need but to scroll to the end of the paper to check my citations rather than sift through stacks of index cards and notebook paper, but it is not a requirement. Some people find it easier to do the Works Cited last, then they know exactly which resources were used and which ones were not (it is not uncommon to pull research material from ten sources and only use information from five or six of them). I simply delete the ones I didn’t actually use. It’s entirely up to you whether you do the Works Cited first or last.
To set up your Works Cited, you must know what types of resource you are using. The two most common resources for students today are books with one author and web pages, but these are only two of about a dozen possible resource types. Generally speaking, you should include any information about your resource that you are able to get your hands on.
For a book, regardless of the number of authors/contributors, the Works Cited entry should look like this:
Author last name (comma) Author first name (period) Book Title Underlined (period, not underlined) Article title (if
applicable) (period) City location ofpublisher (colon) Publisher (comma) year of publication (period)
If you have two or more books by the same author, alphabetize entries by the title of the works and for the second and subsequent entries, replace the author’s name with three dash marks ( – -) followed by a period, just as you did with the author’s name.
For a book with more than one author, the entry should be placed in order by the last name of the first author listed and all of the authors should be listed the way they are listed in the book. The entry will look like this:
Smith, John, Bob Jones, Joann Thomas. Book Title. Etc. etc. etc. as above.
Citing a website can be tricky. The general rule is to include as much information as humanly possible, as many websites will not offer an author, publication date, or several other bits of information. Information which can always be included in the citation is the complete URL of the page from which you found the information (copy and paste this into the Works Cited page to avoid any errors) and the date which you accessed the information (this way, if you audience visit’s the website and cannot find the same information you found they can take into consideration the date which you accessed the page). The URL should be sectioned off with triangle brackets (most word processing programs will automatically format this as a link, to get rid of the link and return to the above format, use control+z (Edit – Undo) immediately after typing the space (which will trigger the auto-format function).
Other information that should be included in your citation, if you are able to find it on the website, is author name, date the page was last updated, any publication groups associated with the site (a lot of times, for sites providing reputable information, this will be a university), and website and/or article title. All information will be arranged just as with a book; the URL will take the place of the publication city and the access date will follow immediately after the date of the latest update (which serves as the publication date):
.State College Press. Updated 5 April 2004. Accessed 28 Sept 2005.
One other common resource you may find yourself using, is a magazine or periodical publication article (* The Castle citations from above were taken from a magazine and will be shown in full documentation here). Format this just as you would a book, adding a step, each, for article title (in quotations) and for page numbers:
If the article is on non-sequential pages, include the page number of the first page followed by a plus sign (the article itself will refer readers to the rest of the pages of the article): 100+ or 100-102+ for an article that starts sequentially and is continued later in the publication (something more commonly found in newspapers than in magazines). For weekly magazines, such as Newsweek or TV Guide, provide the exact date of publication: 19 Feb. 2004 (a sample Works Cited page has been provided, see illustration).
These tips should get your feet off the ground with most standard MLA research papers. Should you find yourself with “odd” resource (something other than a standard book, magazine/periodical, or website), consult your college’s writing center, or if you don’t have one, or visiting the center is inconvenient for you due to work schedules or because you aren’t a student, there are many online resources available to help you format your Works Cited page and in-text citations.
