Modern Language Association (MLA)*

Works Cited List ........ Your works cited list should begin on a separate page from the text of the essay under the label Works Cited (with no quotation marks, underlining, etc.), centered at the top of the page. Double-space all entries, with no skipped spaces between entries. Notes, if any, should be formatted similarly and should appear on a page before the works cited page. Keep in mind that underlining and Italics are equivalent; you should select one or the other to use throughout your essay. Keep in mind that underlining and Italics are equivalent; you should select one or the other to use throughout your essay. ......... This list, alphabetized by the first word in each entry (usually the author's last name), should appear at the end of your essay. It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and be able to read any sources you cite in the essay. Each source you cite in the essay must appear in your works-cited list; likewise, each entry in the Works-cited list must be cited in your text.

Basic Rules   Authors' names are inverted (last name first); if a work has more than one author, invert only the first author's name, follow it with a comma, then continue listing the rest of the authors. If you have cited more than one work by a particular author, order them alphabetically by title, and use three hyphens in place of the author's name for every entry after the first. When an author appears both as the sole author of a text and as the first author of a group, list solo-author entries first.   If no author is given for a particular work, alphabetize by the title of the piece and use a shortened version of the title for parenthetical citations.   The first line of each entry in your list should be flush left. Subsequent lines should be indented one-half inch. This is known as a hanging indent.   All references should be double-spaced. Capitalize each word in the titles of articles, books, etc. This rule does not apply to articles, short prepositions, or conjunctions unless one is the first word of the title or subtitle. Underline or italicize titles of books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and films.   Use quotation marks around the titles of articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Also use quotation marks for the titles of short stories, book chapters, poems, and songs.   List page numbers efficiently, when needed. If you refer to a journal article that appeared on pages 225 through 250, list the page numbers on your Works Cited page as 225-50.     Basic Forms for Sources in Print   The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers provides extensive examples covering a wide variety of potential sources. If your particular case is not covered here, use the basic forms to determine the correct format, consult the MLA Handbook, or call or email the Writing Lab (765-494-3723; owl@owl.english.purdue.edu owl@owl.english.purdue.edu) for help.

• A book

  Author(s). Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of

  ......... Publication.

   

• Book with one author

  Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. Denver: MacMurray

  ......... and Beck, 1999.

   

• Two books by the same author

  (After the first listing of the author's name, use three hyphens and a period for the author's name. List books alphabetically.)

  Palmer, William J. Dickens and New Historicism. New

  ......... York: St. Martin's, 1997.

   

  
  ---. The Films of the Eighties: A Social History. Carbondale:

  ......... Southern Illinois UP, 1993.

   

• Book with more than one author

  Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer

  .........Tutoring. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

  N.B. If there are more than three authors, you may list only the first author followed by the phrase et al. (the abbreviation for the Latin phrase "and others") in place of the other authors' names, or you may list all the authors in the order in which their names appear on the title page.

   

• Book with a corporate author

   

  American Allergy Association. Allergies in Children. New York: Random,

  ......... 1998.

• Book or article with no author named

  Encyclopedia of Indiana. New York: Somerset, 1993.

  "Cigarette Sales Fall 30% as California Tax Rises." New York Times

  ......... 14 Sept. 1999: A17.

  ......... N.B. For parenthetical citations of sources with no author named, use a shortened version of the title instead of an author's name. Use quotation marks and underlining as appropriate. For example, parenthetical citations of the two sources above would appear as follows: (Encyclopedia 235) and ("Decade" 26).

   

• Anthology or collection

  Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical

  .........Approaches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

   

   

• A part of a book (such as an essay in a collection)

  Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Collection. Ed. Editor's

  .........Name(s). Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Pages.

   

• Essay in a collection

  Harris, Muriel. "Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers."

  ......... A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Rafoth.

  ......... Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 2000. 24-34.

  
  ......... Cross-referencing: If you cite more than one essay from the same edited collection, you should cross-reference within your works cited list in order to avoid writing out the publishing information for each separate essay. To do so, include a separate entry for the entire collection listed by the editor's name. For individual essays from that collection, simply list the author's name, the title of the essay, the editor's last name, and the page numbers.

  
  For example:

  L'Eplattenier, Barbara. "Finding Ourselves in the Past: An Argument

  ......... for Historical Work on WPAs." Rose and Weiser 131-40.

  Peeples, Tim. "'Seeing' the WPA With/Through Postmodern Mapping."

  ......... Rose and Weiser 153-167.

  Rose, Shirley K., and Irwin Weiser, eds. The Writing Program Administrator

  ......... as Researcher. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1999.

   

• Article from a reference book

  "Jamaica." Encyclopedia Britannica. 1999 ed.

   

• An article in a periodical (such as a newspaper or magazine)

  Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Source Day Month

  ......... Year: pages.

  ......... N.B. When citing the date, list day before month; use a three-letter abbreviation of the month (e.g. Jan., Mar., Aug.). If there is more than one edition available for that date (as in an early and late edition of a newspaper), identify the edition following the date (e.g. 17 May 1987, late ed.).

   

• Magazine or newspaper article

  Poniewozik, James. "TV Makes a Too-Close Call."

  ......... Time 20 Nov. 2000:70-71.

  Trembacki, Paul. "Brees Hopes to Win Heisman for Team."

  ......... Purdue Exponent 5 Dec. 2000: 20.

   

• An article in a scholarly journal

  Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal Vol (Year): pages.

  ......... N.B. "Vol" indicates the volume number of the journal. If the journal uses continuous pagination throughout a particular volume, only volume and year are needed, e.g. Modern Fiction Studies 40 (1998): 251-81. If each issue of the journal begins on page 1, however, you must also provide the issue number following the volume, e.g. Mosaic 19.3 (1986): 33-49.

   

• Essay in a journal with continuous pagination

  Allen, Emily. "Staging Identity: Frances Burney's Allegory of

  ......... Genre." Eighteenth-Century Studies 31 (1998): 433-51.

   

• Essay in a journal that pages each issue separately

  Duvall, John N. "The (Super) Marketplace of Images: Television as

  ......... Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise." Arizona Quarterly

  ......... 50:3 (1994): 127-53.

  
  

  ....Web Site Postings .... N.B. It is necessary to list your date of access because web postings are often updated, and information available at one date may no longer be available later. Be sure to include the complete address for the site. Also, note the use of angled brackets around the electronic address; MLA requires them for clarity. Author(s). Name of Page. Date of Posting/Revision. Name of .........institution/organization affiliated with the site. Date of Access .........<electronic address>.   Web page Felluga, Dino. Undergraduate Guide to Literary Theory. 17 Dec. 1999. Purdue ......... University. 15 November 2000 <http://omni.cc.purdue.edu ......... %7Efelluga/theory2.html>.   An article on a web site ......... N.B. It is necessary to list your date of access because web postings are often updated, and information available at one date may no longer be available later. Be sure to include the complete address for the site. Also, note the use of angled brackets around the electronic address; MLA requires them for clarity. Author(s)."Article Title." Name of web site. Date of posting/ revision. ......... Name of Institution/organization affiliated with site. Date of access ......... <electronic address>.   Article on a web site Poland, Dave. "The Hot Button." Roughcut. 26 Oct. 1998. Turner .........Network Television. 28 Oct. 1998 <http://www.roughcut.com>.   An article in an online journal or magazine Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume. Issue (Year): ......... Pages/Paragraphs. Date of Access <electronic address>. ......... N.B. Some electronic journals and magazines provide paragraph or page numbers; include them if available. This format is also appropriate to online magazines; as with a print version, you should provide a complete publication date rather than volume and issue number.   Online journal article Wheelis, Mark. "Investigating Disease Outbreaks Under a Protocol to ......... the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention." Emerging ......... Infectious Diseases 6.6 (2000): 33 pars. 5 Dec. 2000 ......... <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no6/wheelis.htm>.     Email Author. "Title of the message (if any)" E-mail to the author. .........Date of the message. .........N.B. This same format may be used for personal interviews or personal letters. These do not have titles, and the description should be appropriate. Instead of "Email to John Smith," you would have "Personal interview."   E-mail to you Kunka, Andrew. "Re: Modernist Literature." E-mail to the .........author. 15 Nov. 2000.   Email communication between two parties, not including the Author Neyhart, David. "Re: Online Tutoring." E-mail to Joe .........Barbato. 1 Dec. 2000.   A listserv posting Author. "Title of Posting." Online posting. Date when material was posted .........(for example:14 Mar. 1998). Name of listserv. Date of access ......... <electronic address>.   Online Posting Karper, Erin. "Welcome!" Online posting. 23 Oct. 2000. ......... Professional Writing Bulletin Board. 12 Nov. 2000. <http://linnell.english.purdue.edu/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000001.html>.   An electronic database Author. "Title of Article." Relevant information for the database. ......... Date of access <electronic address for retrieval>. Provide the bibliographic data for the original source as for any other of its genre, then add the name of the database along with relevant retrival data (such as version number and/or transcript or abstract number).   Article in a reference database on CD-ROM "World War II." Encarta. CD-ROM. Seattle: Microsoft, 1999.   Article from a periodically published database on CD-ROM Reed, William. "Whites and the Entertainment Industry." Tennessee Tribune ......... 25 Dec. 1996: 28. Ethnic NewsWatch. CD-ROM. Data Technologies. ......... Feb. 1997.

  Other Types of Source   Government publication United States Dept. of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2010: ......... Understanding and Improving Health. Washington: GPO, 2000.   Pamphlet Office of the Dean of Students. Resources for Success: Learning .........Disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorders. West Lafayette, IN: ......... Purdue University, 2000.   Interview that you conducted Purdue, Pete. Personal Interview. 1 Dec. 2000.   Advertisement Lufthansa. Advertisement. Time 20 Nov. 2000: 151.   Television or radio program "The Blessing Way." The X-Files. Fox. WXIA, Atlanta. 19 Jul. 1998.   Sound Recording U2. All That You Can't Leave Behind. Interscope, 2000.   Film The Usual Suspects. Dir. Bryan Singer. Perf. Kevin Spacey, ......... Gabriel Bryne. Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, and ......... Benecio del Tooro. Polygram, 1995.   Advertisement Staples. Advertisement. CBS. 3 Dec. 2000.

  Handling Quotations In Your Text     Author's Name ......... MLA format follows the author-page method of ciation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) fom which the quotation is taken must appear in the text, and complete reference should appear in your works-cited list (see Your Works Cited Page, below). The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. Examples: ......... Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow .........of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263). ......... Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a ......... "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263). ......... Wordsworth extensively esplored the role of emotion in the ......... creative process (263). For nonprint (films, TV, series, etc.) or electronic sources, try to include the name that begins the entry in the Works Cited page. Sometimes you may have to use an indirect quotation, that is, a quotation that you found in another source that was quoting from the original. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd in" to indicate the source: ......... Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as "social ......... service centers, and they don't do that well"   Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source form which a quotation is taken. For instance , if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even her or his full name is different authors share initials) in your ciation. If you cite more than one work by a particular author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it form the other works by that same person. Examples:   Two authors with the same last name: ......... Although some medical ethicists claim that cloning will lead to ......... designer children (R. Miller 12), others note that the advantages ......... for medical research outweigh this consideration (A. Miller 46).   Two works by the same author: ......... Lightenor has argued that computers are not useful tools for small ......... children ("Too Soon" 38), though he has acknowledged that early ......... exposure to computer games does not lead to better small motor skill ......... development in a child's second and third year (Hand-Eye Development" 17). Short Quotations ......... To indicate short quotations (fewer than four typed llines of prose or three lines of verse) in your text, enclose the quotation within double quotation marks and incorporate it into your text. Provide the author and specific page citation (in the case of verse, provide line numbers) in the text, and include a complete reference in the works-cited list. ......... Punctuation marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons should appear after the parenthetical citation if they are a part of your text. Examples: ......... According to some, dreams express "profound aspects of ......... personality" (Foulkes 184), though others disagree. ......... According to Foulke's study, dreams may express "profound ......... aspects of personlity" (184). ......... Is it possible that dreams may express "profound aspects ......... of personality" (Foulkes 184)? ......... Cullen concludes, "of all the things that happened there/ That's ......... all I remember" (11-12). Long Quotations ......... Place quotations longer than four typed lines in a free standing block of typewritten lines, and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, indented one-inch from the left margin, and maintain double-spacing. Your parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark. When quoting verse, maintain original line breaks. ( You should maintain double-spacing thoughout your essay.) Examples: ......... Nelly Dean treats Heathcliff poorly and dehumanizes him thoughout her narration: ....................They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even ....................in their room, and i had no more sense, so, I put it on the ....................landing of the stairs , hoping it would be gone on the ....................morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it .................... crept to Mr. Earnshaw's door, and there he found it on ....................quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got .................... there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my .................... cowardice and inhumanity was sent our of the house. (Bronte 78). ......... In "Sources", Adrienne Rich explores the roles of women in shaping their world: ....................The faithful drudging child ....................the child at the oak desk whose penmanship, ....................hard work, style will win her prizes ....................becomes the woman with a mission, ....................not to win but to change the laws of history. (23) Back to top

  
  

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