This document provides an overview of MLA citation format. It explains that MLA is used in the humanities and requires both in-text citations and a works cited page. Proper citation is important to avoid plagiarism and give credit to original authors. The document reviews MLA guidelines for parenthetical citations, titles, novels, and includes examples of how to format citations for different source types like short stories, poems, and novels. Resources for learning and checking citations are also provided.

1. MLA Citations
Woo hoo!

2. MLA…WHAT?
• Hopefully you all are a little familiar with MLA
citation format and remember how to use it from
ENG 101.
• MLA stands for Modern Language Association,
and it is the format we most often write in when
we are writing in the disciplines that are part of
the Humanities.
• There are other citation formats as well like
Chicago (sometimes used in History) or APA
(American Psychological Association…used in the
Social Sciences)

3. Why cite?
• MLA citation is really all about one
thing…giving credit to the original
author of a text or an idea. People’s
intellectual property is legally theirs;
it belongs to them. Therefore, it is
our responsibility as writers to give
credit for ideas that are not our own.

4. Plagiarism
• Also, there are consequences for using others’
ideas without proper citation…or plagiarizing.
Plagiarizing can be many things from copying an
essay from the internet, down to not fully
paraphrasing a sentence from a source. Each
level of plagiarism has different consequences,
but all plagiarism can be avoided with proper
citation. If you are interested in YC’s definition
of plagiarism, check out our syllabus, or the
Student Code of Conduct. The library also has a
couple of videos on plagiarism and citation called
“Diagnosis: Plagiarism” which you will find under
the “Resources for Students” tab on Blackboard.

5. MLA Requirements
• When using MLA format, you need to
be sure to cite in two places:
• 1. In-text using parenthetical
citations.
• 2. At the end of your paper on a
works cited page.

6. Parenthetical Citations
• In-text citations are like the key to a map while the works
cited page is the map. You want your reader to be able to
easily match the two up. That is why the first thing that
appears in the citation on the works cited page is the thing
goes in the parenthetical citation. More often than not that
thing is the author’s last name. Sometimes it is the title of
the book or article if the author is unknown.
• You also want your reader to be able to find the specific
information in the book that you cited, so we also include
the page number in the parenthetical citation, only if it is
available.

7. Works Cited page
• The Works Cited page is where the reader
of your paper can find all the information
he or she would need to go and find your
source on the shelves in the library, or on
the World Wide Web. Incidentally, works
cited pages in articles you read are great
places to find other articles and books on
your subject. This is relevant for all of
the essays you will write in this course.

8. Titles…
• MLA also has rules for formatting. This includes
how you format titles.
• If you are including the title of a long work- like a
novel, a newspaper, a collection of essays or
stories, or a magazine – then the title should be in
italics or underlined.
• If you are including the title of a short work– like
a single poem, short story or article– then the
title should be in quotation marks.

9. Ex: Citing “Bartleby the
Scrivener”
• In MLA format, titles of short stories are always in quotation
marks. Poem titles can be in quotes also, but the titles of whole
books are either underlined or in italics.
• Let’s pretend I want to cite Melville’s story. You always want to
introduce quotes with a signal phrase, so I might say: In Melville’s
story he describes Bartleby as, “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable,
incurably forlorn!” (Melville par. 17). Notice a few things here: 1.
There is a comma before the quote; 2. The period comes after the
parentheses at the end; 3. Since I used an online version of the
story, there are no page numbers. However, the paragraph
numbers are listed in the right hand margin, so I used the
abbreviation par to indicate that this is a paragraph number. If
there were page numbers, it would be (Melville 5). If neither page
nor paragraph numbers were available, I would use the
abbreviation n.p. for no page: (Melville n.p.)

10. Citing Novels
• If I were citing Woodrell’s novel, it would only be a little
different. For example: The author often describe the
darkness of the scenery in the Ozarks: “Clouds looked to be
splitting on distant peaks, dark rolling bolts torn around the
mountaintops to patch the blue sky with grim” (Woodrell
58). Here I introduced the quote with a colon because my
signal phrase is a complete sentence. Also, I included
Woodrell’s name because I didn’t mention him in my signal
phrase. Finally, you will notice that the page number is
simply a numeral with no pg. before it and no comma.

11. Work Cited
• Here is an example of an end citation for that same poem:
• Olds, Sharon. “Rites of Passage.” Poetry Foundation. 2004. 8
June 2010. Web. Then the URL, but it is long and messy to
put here.
• Citations are always double spaced with a hanging indent
(first line is not indented, but all the others are) and they
are in alphabetical order by the first word in the citation.
• Here is one for Atwood (you can use it later in your Atwood
paper):
• Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Anchor
Books, 1986. Print.

12. Resources for Citation
• Feel free to use a citation generator, like
www.citationmachine.net, to help you with citation.
However, you always want to check to see that
you’ve done it right. To do that, you can use a
style guide (like the Little, Brown Handbook) or a
website like the OWL at Purdue (
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/11/).
There are links to these sites on Blackboard
under “Resources for Students.”

13. When do I cite?
• You need to cite anytime you use material from
the text. If it isn’t your idea…cite it.
• Paraphrases must be cited and you also must
completely change the wording and the sentence
structure of the original material. Paraphrases
are a sticky wicket and they are a place where
many people get in trouble with plagiarism.
• You don’t need to use parenthetical citation for
general summary, as long as it is clear to the
reader which text you are summarizing.

14. Other MLA stuff
• MLA formatting also has requirements for page numbers
and headings. I will provide you with a video about
formatting assignments.
• MLA headings appear in the upper left hand corner of your
paper and contain: Your name, your assignment and class,
your teacher’s last name, and the date, each on a separate
line. Your heading should be double spaced.
• Page numbers go on the upper right hand side of the page
and should have your last name along with the page number
(Darrow 1, Darrow 2, etc.).
• If you did purchase the Little, Brown Handbook for this
course, there are resources for MLA citation beginning on
pg. 667.