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Welcome to the Cerro Coso Community College Library’s tutorial on citing in MLA. 

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MLA provides a uniform standard for formatting, punctuation, style, and citation.  

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It is developed and used by the Modern Language Association and many courses in the arts and humanities. 

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In this video, we will focus on using and citing sources in MLA format.


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So why do we need to cite our sources?  

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The most important answer is to avoid plagiarism. 
 

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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, plagiarism is the act of passing someone else’s work off as your own. 

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In an academic setting, copying someone else’s words without giving them credit can carry severe consequences, 

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both in college and in your career.

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Citing sources allows us to avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the original authors. 

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This benefits those authors by recognizing their contributions to the field.

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By using outside sources, you also strengthen the credibility of your own argument.  

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Not only will quoting other sources help prove that you are not making things up, but your essay will be more impressive if you can lean on the 

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authority of experts in your field by using their words to back up your arguments.

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Finally, citing your sources allows your readers to look up your sources and use them to further their own research. 

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This also allows them to determine for themselves whether the information is credible and whether you might be misrepresenting the 

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original author’s intentions. 

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You do not need to cite every statement made in your essay.  

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So what should you cite?  

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It
 depends.  

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You do not need to cite common knowledge, general information, or data you have collected yourself.  

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Most people know that George Washington is the first US President and that Google is a popular search engine.  

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However, very few people just happen to know that George Washington’s father owned 10,000 acres of land or that 65% of web searches are 

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done using Google. 

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This data came from a specific source and you will need to cite that source.  

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You will also need to cite your source whenever you quote something word for word or when you use an image, chart, or graph that someone else 

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has created.  

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When you are unsure about whether something needs to be cited, it is usually better to err on the side of citing.

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You don’t want to overwhelm your paper with quotes.  Use quotes sparingly, and integrate them

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 only where they will strengthen your argument.  

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You should also use at least twice as much space to explain the quote as the quote itself takes up.  

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Since your job is to provide analysis in your paper, you should not let a quote stand on its own without devoting some time to explain its 

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purpose.  

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Use quotes to support your ideas, rather than rephrasing the information found in quote.  After all, this is your paper!

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Every citation comes in two parts.  The first part, the in-text citation, 

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is located in
 

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the body of your paper.  

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This is where you will quote someone’s words or summarize their ideas and relate it to your own argument.  

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The second part is the bibliographic citation, often located on a separate Works Cited page.  

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This is where you write out the full citation of the item where the information you quoted can be found.


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We will look at both of these in greater detail.

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Direct quotes are words and sentences that are lifted directly from the source material.  

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All direct quotes should generally be enclosed between two quotation marks, 

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followed by parentheses that include the author’s last name and the page number where the quote is found.  

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Make sure the period that ends the sentence is outside both the quotation mark and the parentheses. 

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As long as the citation information is present and it is clear whose words are whose, you can vary this formula by breaking up the quote with text of 

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your own, or integrating the author’s name into the sentence and including only the page number in the parentheses.
 

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You can also add to or delete from quotes as necessary.  

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Sometimes you will need to add additional words or change verb tenses and pronouns in order for a quote to flow with the rest of your paper.  

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You can do this by bracketing the information that you are changing or adding.  


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If you want to omit words from a quote, either because it is too long or because you want to make it more readable, add an ellipses (three dots) 

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to signify the part of the quote that has been deleted.  This is generally only done in the middle of a sentence, rather than at the 

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beginning or end of one.


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One thing you may run into is a source with more than three authors.  You have two options with this.  

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Either you can include all the names of the authors or you can simply include the last name of the first author and the words “et al.”  

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Whichever you choose, you will have to do the same with both the in-text citations and the Works Cited page.

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Indirect quotes are used to cite sources that are cited in other sources.  

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This is usually only done if you cannot access the original source and all you have is a secondary source that mentions it.  

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To give credit to both sources, add “qtd. in” to the parentheses in your in-text citation.  

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The citation in the Works Cited page remains the same as it would with a direct quote.


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Here is a citation from a book.  Note that the print and eBook versions are similar.  

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Much of the publication information comes from the title page, near the front of the book.  

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In this example, the publisher (Oxford University Press) and the place of publication (New York) are listed in the middle, 

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along with the copyright date. 

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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data also has a wealth of citation information, 

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including the title and the author – or, in this case, the editor.  

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If you are citing from a print book, you only need to include the word “print” after the publisher.  

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If you are citing an eBook, however, include the database where the eBook is located as well as the medium you used (web) and the date you 

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accessed the material. All of Cerro Coso’s eBooks are located at ebscohost.com


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When citing an article, you will need the following information: the author names, the title of the article, the title of the journal, 

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the volume and issue number, the year issued, the page range, and the medium, such as print for printed articles and web for databases or 

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online sources.  

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Most articles are from databases, so also include the name of the database where you found the article and the date you accessed it. 

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This example is from the item record of an article found on Academic Search Complete.  

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The item record often includes citation information, but if you have a PDF version of the article, much of that information is also included 

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at the top and bottom of each scanned page.


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When citing a website, you will need the following information: 

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the author names, the title of the article, the title of the website, the publication or last modification date of the web page, the medium (web) and the 

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date of access.  

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Unlike this example, many webpages do not have all of the required information, especially those owned by corporations. 

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We will discuss how to handle this on the next few slides.  

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Sometimes sources are missing key points of citation information.  

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This is especially the case with websites, which are usually not reviewed by editors, publishers, or other scholars. 

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Instead of guessing information or making it up, include the information that you do know. For instance, if your source does not have page 

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numbers, leave them out and use only the author’s last name in your in-text citation.  If the item is an article, include “n. pag.” in the Works 

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Cited page. 

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If the item is a webpage, leave it out entirely.
Sometimes no authors will be listed.  

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In this case, use the institution instead of a individual creator. 

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If you cannot find a date, simply use “n.d.” in the Works Cited page. 

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When working with web pages, please note that there is a difference between the page creation date and the copyright date. 

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The creation date is the date the page was uploaded to the internet, while the copyright date may include the full range of years that the 

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website has been online and running. 

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Sometimes, copyright dates are automatically updated, so always use the page creation date or “n.d.” instead of the copyright date for websites. 

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Here is an example of a webpage that is missing some key information.  

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There is no author, no date, and no page number.  In this case, we begin our works cited with the title, rather than the author.  

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We also include the title (or a shortened version of it) in the in-text citation.  

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No date is included on the page, so we put “n.d.” in the Works Cited citation. 

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Since there are no page numbers on this website, we do not include any on the in-text citation.  

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Note that in MLA format, the website URL is not needed.  

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However, the title of the page, the title of the overall website and the publisher are all required.  

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Sometimes, the title of the overall site and the publisher are the same thing, but here, Masterpiece Theatre is the name of this website 

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while PBS is its publisher.

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The Works Cited page should be formatted according to MLA style, with the title “Works Cited” centered at the top, and each entry set apart with 

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a hanging indent.  

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For information on how to format your paper, see the video on “Formatting Your Paper in MLA.”

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Every source you cite in your paper should have an entry in the Works Cited page, alphabetized by the first author’s last name.  

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If there is no author, alphabetize by the first word of the title instead.

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Note that you should abbreviate the names of publishers.  

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For instance, words like “university” and “press” are often simplified to their initials and full names like “McGraw-Hill, Inc.” can be shortened to 

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“McGraw.” 

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Thank you for viewing the Cerro Coso Community College Library’s tutorial on citing your paper in MLA. If you need more help on 

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formatting and citation, visit our Citing Sources page, which has a brief Works Cited PDF as well as links to websites with detailed information 

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and examples on these topics, such as Purdue Owl and Hacker Handbooks.  Or come into the library and a librarian can help you.