This document provides guidance on researching and writing essays according to MLA format. It discusses selecting credible sources from libraries and online, taking effective notes, incorporating sources into papers through paraphrasing and quoting, and properly citing all sources with parenthetical citations and a works cited list to avoid plagiarism. Guidance is provided on summarizing, analyzing and synthesizing information from multiple sources to support arguments in essays.

2. FOR YOUR ESSAYS, YOU NEED:
A N A L Y T I C A L E S S A Y
2 Articles found in
the Library
Database A-Z
A R G U M E N T A T I V E
E S S A Y
2 Articles found in
the Library
Database A-Z
2 Books
2 Online Articles
2 Documentary,
Song, and/or
image

3. DOING RESEARCH
Once you narrow your topic, you can begin researching!
1. Know where and how to search efficiently to find the best information
for your purposes.
2. Make good decisions regarding the quality and appropriateness of your
sources, including assessing whether a resource is trustworthy and up-
to-date.
3. Know who has rights to the work you use.
4. Know how to properly give others credit for their ideas.
5. Know the extent to which you can ethically remix or synthesize ideas
and information in your own work!

4. RESOURCES IN THE WWWC LIBRARY
• OneSearch provides a single place to search most of the content
available in the library. You can find print books, eBooks, DVDS,
articles, dissertations, and more!
• OR you can do things the old fashioned way and check the library
catalog. This includes records for all the print books and audiovisual
materials in the library. You can also check the catalog to find how
many books you have borrowed, and when they’re due. To do this, you
need your I.D number from your student or employee identification
card.
• You can also search for books at other academic libraries!
• Movie Collection

5. OUTSIDE THE WCCC LIBRARY
C R E D I B L E
• JSTOR
• Google Scholar
• .edu & .gov
N O T C R E D I B L E
Blogs, facebook
posts, or other self
authored sites
Research articles
without citations.
Materials published
over 15 years ago
or have theories
that are clearly out
of date

6. ONLINE SOURCES
• Stick to websites that end in .edu or .gov. Domains such as .com, .net,
and .org can be purchased and used by any individual. However, .edu is
reserved for colleges and universities, while .gov denotes a government
website. These two are usually credible sources for information.
• Information on the internet with a listed author is one indication of a
credible site. The fact that the author is willing to stand behind the
information presented (and in some cases, include his or her contact
information) is a good indication that the information is reliable.
• The date of any research information is important, including information
found on the internet. By including a date, the website allows readers to
make decisions about whether that information is recent enough for
their purposes.

7. ONCE YOU HAVE A PILE OF CREDIBLE
SOURCES…
Pick the sources that best suit your essay.
Since you won’t have time to read/watch/listen to various sources, skim.
• Read the preface, if there is one (most of the time it will lay out the
overall argument, or thesis, and tell what each chapter deals with)
• Read the Table of Contents and select the chapter(s) that will be most
useful to you.
• Skim the introduction
• Read the first paragraph of each section
• Read the conclusion
• Jot down key information. Notes are essential for remembering what
you read, where you read it, and for avoiding plagiarism.

8. ONCE YOUR SOURCES ARE IN YOUR PAPER,
YOU MUST GIVE THE AUTHOR CREDIT…
• MLA Citation Format
• Parenthetical Citations
• In-text citation
• Paraphrase
• Format

9. MLA CITATION
MLA Citation Format is a method for formatting your paper and
documenting information you use in your paper. The proper use of a
citation format (such as MLA) can help you avoid plagiarism.
When deciding how to cite your source, start by consulting the list of core
elements. TIn your citation, the elements should be listed in the
following order:
1. Author. Title of Source., Title of Container, Other contributors,
Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.

10. ACRONYM: AT&T, OWNS NYPD. LOCO
Author.
Title of Source
Title of Container
Other Contributors
Number
Publication
Date
Location

11. AUTHOR
Begin the entry with the author’s last name, followed by a comma and the
rest of the name, as presented in the work. End this element with a
period.
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. Knopf, 1994

12. TITLE OF SOURCE
The title of the source should follow the author’s name. Depending upon
the type of the source, it should be listed in italics or quotation marks.
A book should be in italics:
Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. MacMurray, 1990
A website should be in italics:
Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow,
www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html
A song or piece of music on an album should be in quotation marks:
Beyonce. “Pray You Catch Me.” Lemonade, Parkwood Entertainment,
2016, www.beyonce.com/album/lemonade-visual-album/.

13. TITLE OF CONTAINER
Containers are the larger wholes in which the source is located. For
example, if you want to cite a poem that is listed in a collection of
poems, the individual poem is the source, while the larger collection is
the container. The title of the container is usually italicized and followed
by a comma, since the information that follows next describes the
container.
Packer, ZZ. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.” Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Stories. 2003, pp 107-128.

14. OTHER CONTRIBUTORS
In addition to the author, there may be other contributors to the source who
should be credited, such as editors, illustrations, translators, etc. If their
contributions are relevant to your research, or necessary to identity the
source, include their names in your documentation.
Woolf, Virginia. Jacob’s Room. Annotated with an introduction by Vara Neverow,
Harcourt, Inc., 2008.

15. VERSION
If a source is listed as an edition or version of a work, include it in your
citation.
The Bible. Authored King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998
Is MLA
kewl or
wut?

16. NUMBER
If a source is part of a numbered sequence, such as a multi-volume book,
or journal with both volume and issue numbers, those numbers must be
listed in your citation.
Dolby, Nadine. “Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions
and Future Directions.” Social Work and Society: The International
Online-Only Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008,
www.sowork.net/sws/article/view/60/362. Accessed 20 May 2009

17. PUBLISHER
The publisher produces or distributes the source to the public. If there is
more than one publisher, and they are all relevant to your research, list
them in your citation, separated by a forward slash. (/)
Klee. Paul. Twittering Machine. 1992. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The
Artchive, www.artchive.com/artchive/K/klee/twittering_machine.jpg.html.
Accessed May 2006

18. PUBLICATION DATE
The same source may have been published on more than one date, such as
an online version of an orginal source. For example, a television series
might have aired on a broadcast network on one date, but relreased on
Netflix on a different date. When the source has more than one date, it
is sufficient to use the date that is most relevant to your use of it. If you
are unsure about which date to use, go with the date of the source’s
original publication.
“Traces to Nowhere.” Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost,
season one, episode 5, ABC Network, 10 June 1991.
It is happening
again.

19. LOCATION
You should be as specific as possible in identifying a work’s location. An
essay in a book, or an article in a journal should include page numbers.
Adiche, Chimamanda Ngozi. “On Monday of Last Week.” The Thing Around
Your Neck, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, pp 74-94.

20. PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS
Parenthetical citations within the text of your paper let your reader know
when you’ve used information from another source. The parenthetical
citation corresponds to a source listed in their works cited page.
You must cite the source within your text any time you use others’ work,
facts, ideas, statistics, diagrams, charts, drawing, music or words in
your paper. When you quote, paraphrase, or summarize a single phrase
or a whole chapter, you must acknowledge the original author no matter
how much of the source you use or how often you use it.
When you paraphrase or put information from a source into your own
words, you must change not only the words of the original source, but
also the sentence structure, and must cite the source within your text.
Even if your whole paragraph is a paraphrase or summary of one
source, it is not acceptable to cite only at the end of the paragraph as
necessary to make clear to your reader that you are still borrowing from
the same source.

21. EXAMPLES OF PARENTHETICAL CITATION
One critic complains of the authors, “They’re sheep in wolves’ clothing who
manage to write about bad things and make you feel good” (Bukiet 35)
Anna Fundler explains that the Stasi “was a bureaucracy metastisised
through East German society” (sic) (5).
Herr Bock, a former training professor at the Ministry of State Security,
explains that, above all, an informer “needed to be honest, faithful, and
trustworthy” (qtd. In Funder 200)

22. LONG QUOTATIONS…
Should be indented one inch from the left margin without quotation marks,
and the period placed before the parenthetical citation. After the
blocked quotation, your analysis of the quote should continue at the left
margin.

23. IN-TEXT CITATION
An in-text citation, the author’s name appears in a sentence and not in
parentheses. Please note that in MLA citing, page numbers (if available)
usually go in parentheses. This is the same whether paraphrasing or
quoting.
Example: Betsy Donna firmly believed this. (87-102)
Wordsworth states that Romantic poetry was marked by a “spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings” (263).

24. PARAPHRASE
• The paraphrase reflects the same ideas as the original quote, but is in
its own words and writing style.
• Its information that you have learned from an outside source, that is not
common knowledge.
• There is still a parenthetical citation, citing the source of the idea.

25. FORMATTING YOUR PAPER THE MLA WAY
• One-inch page margins
• Double-spaced paragraphs
• A header with author’s last name and page number one-half inch from
the top of each page.
• Name of author, name of professor, title of course, date of paper on the
first page of the paper, left hand corner
• A works cited page beginning on a separate page at the end of the
paper.

26. GUYS…FOR REAL...
STOP putting giant spaces between the paragraphs. When you start a new
paragraph, indent….YO NOT FOOLIN NOBODY!

27. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS?
I first considered my mouth to be an
oyster after reading a Washington
Post article. In the piece, a dude
from Virginia, debunks the myth
that closed oysters are bad to eat.
He says people are overly sensitive
with shellfish. There’s a lot of
misguided information out there,
and it just echoes back and forth.”

28. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS?
We position Updike’s fictional
A&P as a space where the “big
curriculum” of consumption is
enacted in everyday life and
explore both how the
curriculum of consumption
works and how resistance to
consumerism might operate.

29. WHAT’S MISSING?
Ackley, Anne. “Animals Gone Wild.” The New York
Times, 22 May 2007,
www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/science/earth/22a
nder.html_.
Milken, Michael, et al. New Perspectives Quartlerly,
vol 23, no 4, 2006, p. 63.
West, Billy. “Rodeos and Cats: Co-evolution”