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ENGL 100: Visions of the Waste Land

For Professor Gregory Smith -- Fall 2019

Citing Your Sources

The MLA style is the official style of literary scholars. You can find the handbook in the low shelf near the Research/IT desk in the library.

Basic Citation Patterns in MLA

Format your paper so that each item in your bibliography begins with a hanging indent.

Book:

Instructions for different kinds of books (books in series, chapters in books, translated books, etc) begin at section 5.5.2 in the MLA manual.

So, for example:

Author’s name. Title of the book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Format.

Johnson, Roberta. Gender and Nation in the Spanish Modernist Novel. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2003. Print.


Journal Article:

Instructions for citing periodicals (including newspapers and journal articles) begin at section 5.4.2 in the MLA manual.

So, for example:

Author’s name. “Title of the article.” Journal Title volume.issue (Year): page numbers. Format.

Piper, Andrew. “Rethinking the Print Object: Goethe and the Book of Everything.” PMLA 121.1 (2006): 124-38. Print.


Web Page:

Include as much information as you can, understanding that not every web page provides all the information below. There is no need to include the URL of the web page unless it is hard to find in Google. Instructions for citing web sources begin at section 5.6 in the MLA manual.

  1. Name of the author
  2. Title of the work (italicized if the work is independent; in roman type and quotation marks if the work is part of a larger work)
  3. Title of the overall Web site (italicized), if distinct from item 2
  4. Version or edition used
  5. Publisher or sponsor of the site; if not available, use N.p.
  6. Date of publication (day, month, and year, as available); if nothing is available, use n.d.
  7. Medium of publication (Web)
  8. Date of access (day, month, and year)

So for example:

“Maplewood, New Jersey.” Map. Google Maps. Google, 15 May 2008. Web. 15 May 2008.

Quade, Alex. “Elite Team Rescues Troops behind Enemy Lines.” CNN.com. Cable News Network, 19 Mar. 2007. Web. 15 May 2008.