MLA Bibliographic Style -- A Brief Guide
For full information about the style required by the Marple Newtown High School faculty, visit our Communication Skills -- Student Handbook.
This page is designed to be a quick reference guide to the MLA style of documenting sources in research papers. Your "Works Cited" section should appear at the end of your paper and works should be arranged alphabetically by author (or title, if no author appears in the entry). In this section you should list only works actually cited. (Your teacher may also request a list of works consulted.) Entries should be double spaced. For further information about types of entries not listed here, consult Joseph Gibaldi's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
Formats for the "WORKS CITED" section
When citing any printed work, the information that MUST be included, in this order, are:
Author. Title. City of publication: Publisher, Year of publication
A Book By One Author
Chobsky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.
Two or More Books by the Same Author
Hinds, Kathryn. The Court. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2004.
-----. Life in the Middle Ages. New York: Benchmark Books, 2004.
A Book By Two or Three Authors
Philbrick, Rodman and Lynn Harnett. Abduction. New York: Scholastic, 1998.
A Book by a Corporate Author
Diagram Group. The Way to Play: an Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Games of the World.
New York: Paddington, 1975.
A Book with an Editor
Bloom, Harold, ed. Homer's Iliad. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House, 1996.
A Work in an Anthology
Beatty, Paul. "A Three Point Shot from Andromeda." The United States of Poetry. Comp. Joshua Blum,
Bob Holman and Mark Pellington. New York: Abrams, 1996.
An Edition Other Than the First
Cummings, Paul. Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists. 6th ed.
New York: St. Martin's, 1996.
An Article in a Familiar Reference Book
"Internal Combusion Engine." Encyclopedia Americana. International Edition. 2000.
A Signed Article in a Reference Book
Holmes, Gillian S. "Mousetrap." How Products are Made. Detroit: Gale, 2000. 321-324.
An Unsigned Article in a Reference Book
"Spanish Art and Architecture." The Middle Ages: an Encyclopedia for Students.
New York: Scribner's, 1996.
An Article in a Scholarly Journal, Continuous Pagination
The journal number and the month or season may be ignored with journals that are continuously paginated. This applies to most scholarly journals.
Krauss, Lawrence M., and Glenn D. Starkman. "The Fate of Life in the Universe."
Scientific American 281 (1999): 58-65.
An Article in a Journal/Magazine that pages each issue separately.
The journal number must be included in the citation. Add a period and the issue number directly after the volume number, without any intervening space.
Smith, Johanna M. "Constructing the Nation: Eighteenth-century Geographies for Children."
Mosaic 34.2 (2001): 133-48.
An Article from a Weekly or Biweekly Periodical
Greenfield, Jeff. "Remote Controlled." Time 29 Nov. 1999: 38.
A Signed Article from a Daily Newspaper
Collins, Huntly, and Shankar Vendantam. "Penn Denies Therapy Lapse Killed Teen."
Philadelphia Inquirer 9 Dec. 1999: A1, A22.
An Unsigned Article from a Daily Newspaper
"Soldier Guilty of Premeditated Murder." Philadelphia Inquirer 9 Dec. 1999: A23.
A Specific Article in CLC, TCLC, DLB, CA or any others in this series
Source from a book:
Cronin, Richard. "The Quiet and the Loud: Anita Desai's India." Imagining India. New York:
Macmillan Press, 1989. 45-58. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol.97. Detroit:
Gale, 1997. 175-181.
Source from an article in a journal:
Jarman, Mark. "The Grammar of Glamour: The Poetry of Jorie Graham." New England Review 14 (1992):
252-61. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 97. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 175-181.
Review
Review of Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. Kirkus Reviews 55.6 (1987): 404.
Films, Videos, Radio Programs or Television Programs
Napoleon Bonaparte: The Glory of France. Biography. VHS. A&E Television Network, New York. 1997.
Terrorism: the New World War. Videocassette. ABC News, 1989.
Personal or Telephone Interview
Frame, Theodore. Personal interview. 13 July 1997.
Like citing any other source, the most important thing to remember when citing electronic media is to give the reader as much essential information as possible (e.g. author, title, publisher, date of publication). This allows the reader to identify the source that you are citing. The basic format is as follows:
Author's name. "Title of the document."
Information about print publication.
Information about electronic publication. Access/URL information.
World Wide Web -- basic entry
"Mammal Guide: Aardvark." Animal Planet. 2004. Discovery.com. 2 Feb. 2004
<http://animal.discovery.com/guides/mammals/habitat/tropgrassland/aardvark.html>.
Article in an Online Encyclopedia
Cafruny, Alan W. "East India Company." 29 January 2004. Worldbook Online Reference Center. 2004.
An Entire Internet Site
Hyperstat Online Textbook. Ed. David Lane. 2003. 2 February 2004
Solarviews.com. Ed. Calvin J. Hamilton. 2003. 2 February 2004
Women Writers. Ed. Kim Wells. Winter 2004. 30 January 2004
A Personal Home Page
Lancashire, Ian. Home page. 28 Mar. 2002. 15 May 2003
Tatton, Sharon. Home page. [2002]. 2 February 2004
An Entire Online Book
Keats, John. Poetical Works. 1884. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Ed. Steven van Leeuwen.
2002. 13 October 2003 <http://www.bartleby.com/126/>.
A Portion of an Online Book
Keats, John. "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Poetical Works. 1884. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online.
Ed. Steven van Leeuwen. 2002. 13 October 2003 <http://www.bartleby.com/126/41.htm>.
'Notes' Online
Moore, Brenda and Selena Ward. "Sparknote for The Color Purple by Alice Walker." Sparknotes.com.
2003. 11 Feb. 2004 <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/purple>.
NoveList
Blodgett, Jan. Rev. of She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. Library Journal. Feb. 2002. NoveList.
EBSCO. Marple Newtown High School Library. 10 Feb. 2004 <http://novelst3.epnet.com>.
A Web Site when the URL is too long or there is no specific URL
Here, simply give the URL of the site's search page, and then provide the path (via links) you followed to a specific web page.
"This Day in Technology History: August 20." History Channel.com. 2002. History Channel.
14 May 2002 <http://historychannel.com/>. Path: Technology History: This Day in
Technology History.
A Work from a Library Subscription Service [EBSCO or any other POWER Library Resources]
"Censorship Watch." American Libraries. Oct. 2003: 13. EBSCOHost Research Databases. EBSCO.
Marple Newtown High School Library. 30 Jan. 2004 <http://web13.epnet.com/>.
A Personal E-mail
Lantz, Lynn. "PYO Minutes, November 1999." E-mail to Eleanor James. 22 Nov. 1999.
An E-mail sent to you
James, Eleanor. "Revised PYO Minutes." Personal e-mail. 10 Dec. 1999
Citing works within the text
To cite an entire work -- whether print, nonprint, or an electronic publication that has no pagination or other type of reference markers -- it is preferable to include in the text, rather than in a parenthetical reference, the name of the person (e.g., author, editor, director, performer) that begins the corresponding entry in the works cited list. Refer to the works cited below to better understand these examples.
Book
Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future include many examples of this trend.
Article
Diction, according to Anthony Tommasini, is more important than vocal prowess in a singer of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Miscellaneous nonprint
Diana Rigg gave a memorable interpretation of Medea.
Electronic sources
William J. Mitchell's City of Bits discusses architecture and urban life in the context of the digital telecommunications revolution.
Michael Joyce was among the first to write fiction in hypertext.
If you quote, paraphrase, or otherwise use a specific passage in a book or an article, give the relevant page or section number or numbers. When the author's name is in your text, give only the number reference in parenthesis, but if the context does not clearly identify the author, add the author's last name before the reference. Leave a space between them, but do not insert punctuation. Refer to the works cited below to better understand these examples.
Book
Another engaging passage is the opening of Isabel Allende's story "Toad's Mouth" (83).
Article
Between 1968 and 1988, television coverage of presidential elections changed dramatically (Hallin 5).
Electronic sources
"The study of comparative literature," Bill Readings wrote, "takes off from the idea of humanity" (6).
Works Cited
Allende, Isabel. "Toad's Mouth." Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. A Hammock beneath the Mangoes: Stories
from Latin America. Ed. Thomas Colchie, New York: Plume, 1992. 83-88.
Fukuyama, Francis. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York:
Farrar, 2002.
Hallin, Daniel C. "Sound Bite News: Television Coverage of Elections, 1968-1988." Journal of
Communication 42.2 (1992): 5-24.
Mitchell, William J. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Informationbahn. Cambridge: MIT P,
1995. MIT Press. 23 Sept. 2002 <http://www.mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/City_of_Bits/>.
Readings, Bill. "Translatio and Comparative Literature: The Terror of European Humanism." Surfaces.
1.11 (1991): 19 pp. 23 Sept. 2002 <http://www.pum/umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/vol1/readin-a.html>.
Rigg, Diana, perf. Medea. By Euripedes. Trans. Alistair Elliot. Dir. Jonathan Kent. Longacre Theatre,
New York. 7 Apr. 1994.
Tommasini, Anthony. "In G. and S., Better to Have More Words, Less Voice." Rev. of The Mikado, by William
S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. New York City Opera. New York State Theater, New York. New York Times
10 Mar. 1997, late ed.: C22.
Style information based on:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
6th ed. New York: Modern Language
Association of America, 2003.