BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MLA STYLE FOR A BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL RULES OF MLA STYLE
* List citations in alphabetical order by authors’ (or editors’) last
names. Do not number your citations.
* Each entry should begin flush with the left-hand margin, but the second (and
third or more) line of the same citation should be indented 5 spaces.
* In all cases, the citation begins with the author’s name (last name
first). If there are two or three
authors, the second and third authors’ names are listed first name first. For example:
Bender, David R., John
Ashton and Marie White. National
Information Policies: A Strategy for the Future.
* If an author’s name is not given, the citation begins with the title. Citations with no author given appear
alphabetically in your list according to the first letter of the first word in
the title. (However, ignore initial articles a, an, and the when
alphabetizing. For example, a newspaper
story with the headline “A Library with On-Line Books” – if no author was given
– would appear in your list with other citations filed under “L”.)
* If you are listing more than one item by the same author, you do not
need to retype the author’s name for the second, third, etc. citation by that
author. Instead, type three hyphens and
a period, and then give the title. The
three hyphens stand for exactly the same name or names as in the preceding
citation. Works by the same author are alphabetized in your list by title. For example:
Schiller, Herbert. Culture, Inc.
---.
Information and the Crisis Economy.
* A book that has an editor rather than an author should be indicated after the
editor’s name by the abbreviation “ed.”.
For example:
Dubus, Andre,
ed. Into the Silence: American
Stories.
* Magazine, journal and book titles are always underlined.
* The title of a magazine or journal article is always put in
quotations. The same goes for newspaper
article headlines.
* Separate main titles from subtitles with a colon (:) even though the computer record may use a semicolon.
* All words in the titles and subtitles of books or articles are
capitalized except the following parts of speech (when they are not the first
word in a title or subtitle):
-- articles: a,
an, the
-- prepositions:
against, between, in, of, to,
and others
-- coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, nor, or, do, yet and
others
-- the to infinitives: as in How
to Play Chess
SPECIFIC MLA FORMATS:
BOOKS
* Citations
for books are arranged in 3 sections, each followed by a period:
Author’s
name (last name first)
Title
(and subtitle, if there is one) (underlined)
Place
of publication, publisher, date.
For example:
Fink, Deborah.
Process and Politics in Library Research.
Association,
1989.
* When
citing a book, if more than one city is listed on the title page as the place
of publication, cite only the first one.
Include the state or country only when absolutely necessary. For example, most people know that
Roszak, Theodore. The Cult of
Information.
Widman, Rudy, et. al.
Electronic Access to Information.
Kendall/Hunt,
1991.
PERIODICAL ARTICLES
– FORMAT USED FOR PAPER COPIES OF ARTICLES
* PERIODICAL ARTICLES IN PROFESSIONAL,
POPULAR, OR NEWS MAGAZINES
Author. “Title of article.” Title of magazine Day (if given) Month and year : Page numbers.
Bazell, Robert. “Science and
Society: Growth Industry.” New
Republic
15
Mar. 1993: 13-14.
NOTE:
-- Dates that contain the exact day of the month are written in day,
month, year order with no commas.
-- Abbreviate the names of months except May, June, and July.
-- When giving the page numbers of an article, do not use the
abbreviations “p.” or “pp”. It is
understood that the numbers to the right of the colon are page numbers.
-- If the article does not appear on consecutive pages, give the first
page number followed by a plus sign (+).
In the above example, if the article was printed on pages 13-14 and
continued on pages 26-30, you would write “13+”
(not “13-30”).
* PERIODICAL ARTICLES IN SCHOLARY AND
RESEARCH JOURNALS
Author. “Title of
article.” Title of Journal Volume number. Issue number (Date of
publication): page numbers.
Babrow, Austin S.
“Student Motives for Watching Soap Operas.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic
Media 31.3 (Summer 1997): 309-321.
NOTE:
-- Citations for journal
articles include a volume number and an issue number and the date is put in parentheses. Citations for non-scholarly articles do
not include volume or issue numbers and the date is not put in
parentheses.
-- When giving the title of a
periodical, omit any introductory article in the magazine or journal title
(e.g. William and Mary Quarterly, not The William and Mary Quarterly). No punctuation mark after the name of a
periodical.
* NEWSPAPER
ARTICLES
Author. “Headline.” Title of Newspaper Day Month Year: Section letter or number,
page numbers.
MacKenzie, Bill.
“Packin’ the Heat.” San Francisco Chronicle 4 Nov. 1993: A16+.
NOTE:
-- If the newspaper section is a number
rather than a letter, use the abbreviation “sec.”. For example:
“Market Leaks: Illegal Insider Trading Seems to be on Rise; Ethical
Issues Muddled.” Wall Street Journal
2 Mar. 1984, sec 1: 1.
-- If an edition is specified on the front page (often in the upper
right hand corner of the print copy or in a special field of the bibliographic record),
identify it after the date and before the page reference. This is done because other editions of the
newspaper may be paged differently or have differences in content. For example:
Starr, Kevin. “Can Democracy
Survive if Information is Controlled?” New
York Times 18 July 1993, late ed.: B1+.
-- When giving the name of a newspaper, omit the initial article The.
-- If the city is not part of the name,
add it in brackets after the newspaper’s name (e.g. Evening Sun
[Baltimore]).
PERIODICAL ARTICLES
– FORMAT USED WHEN DATABASE PROVIDES THE FULL-TEXT OF THE ARTICLE BEING CITED
If you access the full-text of a periodical article from a database – even if
the document was originally published in a traditional print publication – you
must indicate the name of the database, the database service or publisher,
the name of the library through which the database was accessed, and the date
you accessed the article. This
information is in addition to the standard information given when citing a
paper copy of a periodical article, as shown above. You must also indicate the URL (web address)
of the database service. For example:
Citation from Gale PowerSearch databases:
Acid rain's dirty business: stealing minerals from
soil. Science 272.n5259 (April
12, 1996): p198(2). (1066 words) From Expanded
Academic ASAP.
MLA format:
Kaiser, Jocelyn. “Acid Rain’s
Dirty Business: Stealing Minerals from the Soil.” Science 12 Apr. 1996: 198+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale.
----
Citation from Gale PowerSearch databases:
Report on Acid Rain Finds Good News and Bad
News.(National Desk).The New York Times (Oct 7,
1999) (952 words) From General
OneFile.
MLA format:
Yoon, Carol K. “Report on
Acid Rain Finds Good News and Bad News.” New York Times 7 Oct. 1999: n. p. General OneFile.
Gale.
-- The numbers of pages (that are shown in parentheses in database citations) are not
used in MLA citations. For articles with multiple pages, the plus sign
(+) is added after the beginning page number.
--If no page numbers are listed in the
database citation, use “n. p.” (for
no page numbers available.)
-- Do not include parenthetical
information at the end of article titles in database citations. This is extra information about the article
that is provided by the database company, but is not part of the article
title.
WEB PAGES
Citations written in MLA style for
Web pages include as much of the following information as is given for the
page. If any of these pieces of
information is not given, leave it out.
- Author's last name, first name, middle initial
- "Title of the Page." (If no title is given, provide a
description, such as “Personal Home Page.”)
- Title of the overall website of which the page is a part
(underlined)
- Day Month & Year of publication or latest update
- Name of any institution or organization sponsoring or associated
with the Web site (if given and if different from the title of the site)
- Day Month Year of your visit to this page
- <URL (web address) of the page>.
EXAMPLE:
Levin, Gilbert V. and Ron L. Levin. "Liquid Water and Life on
Mars." Life on Mars. 1 Sep. 1998. Biospherics
Incorporated. 16 Nov. 2007.
<http://www.biospherics.com/Mars/spie2/spie98.htm>.
COMMON
ERRORS IN MLA FORMAT RULES
Note the following MLA rules that often cause
problems for students:
-- All words in the titles and subtitles of books or articles are capitalized except the following parts of speech (when they are not the first word in a title or subtitle):
n
articles: a,
an, the
n
prepositions:
against, between, in, of, to, and others
n
coordinating
conjunctions: and, but, for, nor, or, do, yet and others
n
the to
infinitives: as in How to Play
Chess
-- Dates that contain the exact day of the month are
written in day, month, year order with no commas, e.g. 23
Jan. 2007
--
The numbers of pages (that are shown in
parentheses in database citations) are not used in MLA citations. In MLA
format, the plus sign (+) is added after the beginning page number for multiple
page articles from databases.
-- Do not include
parenthetical information at the end of article titles in database citations.
This is extra information included by the database, but it is not part of the
article title. For example, in the
following: Report on Acid Rain Finds Good News and Bad
News.(National Desk). “(National Desk)” is not part of the article title.
-- Scholarly journal articles require the volume
and issue numbers before the date; then the date must be put in
parentheses. Magazine and newspaper articles do not include the
volume and issue numbers and the date is not put in parentheses.
OTHER EXAMPLES
If you are including a
source in your bibliography not covered by the above examples, check
http://www.skylinecollege.edu/library/citing.html#MLA
for more citation examples.
last revised: 12-4-07
by
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