How to Cite a Text[1]
When you are quoting from one of the assigned texts on the syllabus, you do not need to give full bibliographical information (i.e. publisher, year, etc.). Thus if you are quoting from one of the plays we are reading, you need only cite the page of the quotation. If you are using a different edition than the one assigned, cite the edition.
The proper format for quotations is as follows:
Short Quotations
If the quotation is five lines or fewer, it should be quoted in the body of your paragraph, so that I might quote Faustus: “We must now perform / The form of Faustus’ fortunes, good or bad: / And now to patient judgments we appeal / And speak for Faustus in his infancy” (1.1.7-10). Note that “/” marks the end of a line of verse and that the first word of every line is capitalized. If I were citing an essay or novel, a parenthetic citation would be: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich …had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” (7). Above all, note the order of the punctuation at the end of the quotation: quotation mark, parenthetic page (or verse) citation, period.
Long Quotations
If the quotation is longer than five lines, then use an indented block quotation:
When Edward King’s body could not be recovered from the sea, the young John Milton poetically created a vitalist world that would overcome the indignity of his friend’s absent body:
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime. (3-8)
Nature, which brings death and then robs mourners of a friend’s body, must be disturbed “with [the] forced fingers” of the poet’s pen.
Note that you do not use quotation marks, and that the period precedes the page or line numbers.
Works Cited/Bibliography Page
The works cited list 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 bibliography must be cited in your text. Preparing your works cited list using MLA style is covered in chapter six of the MLA Style Manual. Here are some guidelines for preparing your works cited list.
List Format:
Begin your works cited list on a separate page from the text of the essay under the
Label “Works Cited” or “Bibliography” (with no quotation marks, underlining, etc.), which should be centered at the top of the page.
Make the first line of each entry in your list flush left with the margin. Subsequent lines in each entry should be indented one-half inch. This is known as a hanging indent.
Keep in mind that underlining and italics are equivalent; you should select one or the other to use throughout your essay.
Alphabetize the list of works cited by the first word in each entry (usually the author’s last name).
Basic Rules for Bibliographic Entries:
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.
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.
If you’re citing an article or a publication that was originally issued in print form but that you retrieved from an online database, you should provide enough information so that the reader can locate the article either in its original print form or retrieve it from the online database (if they have access). For more about this, see our discussion of electronic sources.
For more about formatting your works cited page, visit MLA List of Works Cited (http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities/list.html ), view a Sample Works Cited Page (http://www.aresearchguide.com/10works.html#sampleworks ).
1. BOOKS:
Author(s). Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication.
Example #1 – Book with one author:
Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. Denver: MacMurray, 1999.
Example #2 – 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.
Example #3 – Book with more than one author:
Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Boston: Allyn, 2000.
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.
2. ARTICLE in a periodical (such as a newspaper or magazine):
Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Source Day Month Year: pages.
Example #1 – Magazine or newspaper article:
Poniewozik, James. “TV Makes a Too-Close Call.” Time 20 Nov. 2000: 70-71.
Trembacki, Paul. “Brown Hopes to Win Heisman for Team.” Notre Dame Observer 5 Dec. 1987: 20.
Example # 2 – An article in a scholarly journal:
Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal Vol (Year): pages.
“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.
Example #3 – Essay in a journal with continuous pagination:
Allen, Emily. “Staging Identity: Frances Burney’s Allegory of Genre.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 31 (1998): 433-51.
Example #4 – 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.
3. ONLINE ARTICLE:
Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal Volume. Issue (Year): Pages/Paragraphs. Date of Access .
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.
Example #1 – 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 .
[1] Adapted from and inspired by Chris Vanden Bossche as well as “Using Modern Language Association (MLA) Format” from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html).