Welcome to the Cerro Coso Community College Library’s tutorial on citing in MLA.
MLA provides a uniform standard for formatting, punctuation, style, and citation.
It is developed and used by the Modern Language Association and many courses in the arts and humanities.
In this video, we will focus on using and citing sources in MLA format.
So why do we need to cite our sources?
The most important answer is to avoid plagiarism.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, plagiarism is the act of passing someone else’s work off as your own.
In an academic setting, copying someone else’s words without giving them credit can carry severe consequences,
both in college and in your career.
Citing sources allows us to avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the original authors.
This benefits those authors by recognizing their contributions to the field.
By using outside sources, you also strengthen the credibility of your own argument.
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
authority of experts in your field by using their words to back up your arguments.
Finally, citing your sources allows your readers to look up your sources and use them to further their own research.
This also allows them to determine for themselves whether the information is credible and whether you might be misrepresenting the
original author’s intentions.
You do not need to cite every statement made in your essay.
So what should you cite?
It depends.
You do not need to cite common knowledge, general information, or data you have collected yourself.
Most people know that George Washington is the first US President and that Google is a popular search engine.
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
done using Google.
This data came from a specific source and you will need to cite that source.
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
has created.
When you are unsure about whether something needs to be cited, it is usually better to err on the side of citing.
You don’t want to overwhelm your paper with quotes. Use quotes sparingly, and integrate them
only where they will strengthen your argument.
You should also use at least twice as much space to explain the quote as the quote itself takes up.
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
purpose.
Use quotes to support your ideas, rather than rephrasing the information found in quote. After all, this is your paper!
Every citation comes in two parts. The first part, the in-text citation,
is located in
the body of your paper.
This is where you will quote someone’s words or summarize their ideas and relate it to your own argument.
The second part is the bibliographic citation, often located on a separate Works Cited page.
This is where you write out the full citation of the item where the information you quoted can be found.
We will look at both of these in greater detail.
Direct quotes are words and sentences that are lifted directly from the source material.
All direct quotes should generally be enclosed between two quotation marks,
followed by parentheses that include the author’s last name and the page number where the quote is found.
Make sure the period that ends the sentence is outside both the quotation mark and the parentheses.
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
your own, or integrating the author’s name into the sentence and including only the page number in the parentheses.
You can also add to or delete from quotes as necessary.
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.
You can do this by bracketing the information that you are changing or adding.
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)
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
beginning or end of one.
One thing you may run into is a source with more than three authors. You have two options with this.
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.”
Whichever you choose, you will have to do the same with both the in-text citations and the Works Cited page.
Indirect quotes are used to cite sources that are cited in other sources.
This is usually only done if you cannot access the original source and all you have is a secondary source that mentions it.
To give credit to both sources, add “qtd. in” to the parentheses in your in-text citation.
The citation in the Works Cited page remains the same as it would with a direct quote.
Here is a citation from a book. Note that the print and eBook versions are similar.
Much of the publication information comes from the title page, near the front of the book.
In this example, the publisher (Oxford University Press) and the place of publication (New York) are listed in the middle,
along with the copyright date.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data also has a wealth of citation information,
including the title and the author – or, in this case, the editor.
If you are citing from a print book, you only need to include the word “print” after the publisher.
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
accessed the material. All of Cerro Coso’s eBooks are located at ebscohost.com
When citing an article, you will need the following information: the author names, the title of the article, the title of the journal,
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
online sources.
Most articles are from databases, so also include the name of the database where you found the article and the date you accessed it.
This example is from the item record of an article found on Academic Search Complete.
The item record often includes citation information, but if you have a PDF version of the article, much of that information is also included
at the top and bottom of each scanned page.
When citing a website, you will need the following information:
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
date of access.
Unlike this example, many webpages do not have all of the required information, especially those owned by corporations.
We will discuss how to handle this on the next few slides.
Sometimes sources are missing key points of citation information.
This is especially the case with websites, which are usually not reviewed by editors, publishers, or other scholars.
Instead of guessing information or making it up, include the information that you do know. For instance, if your source does not have page
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
Cited page.
If the item is a webpage, leave it out entirely. Sometimes no authors will be listed.
In this case, use the institution instead of a individual creator.
If you cannot find a date, simply use “n.d.” in the Works Cited page.
When working with web pages, please note that there is a difference between the page creation date and the copyright date.
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
website has been online and running.
Sometimes, copyright dates are automatically updated, so always use the page creation date or “n.d.” instead of the copyright date for websites.
Here is an example of a webpage that is missing some key information.
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.
We also include the title (or a shortened version of it) in the in-text citation.
No date is included on the page, so we put “n.d.” in the Works Cited citation.
Since there are no page numbers on this website, we do not include any on the in-text citation.
Note that in MLA format, the website URL is not needed.
However, the title of the page, the title of the overall website and the publisher are all required.
Sometimes, the title of the overall site and the publisher are the same thing, but here, Masterpiece Theatre is the name of this website
while PBS is its publisher.
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
a hanging indent.
For information on how to format your paper, see the video on “Formatting Your Paper in MLA.”
Every source you cite in your paper should have an entry in the Works Cited page, alphabetized by the first author’s last name.
If there is no author, alphabetize by the first word of the title instead.
Note that you should abbreviate the names of publishers.
For instance, words like “university” and “press” are often simplified to their initials and full names like “McGraw-Hill, Inc.” can be shortened to
“McGraw.”
Thank you for viewing the Cerro Coso Community College Library’s tutorial on citing your paper in MLA. If you need more help on
formatting and citation, visit our Citing Sources page, which has a brief Works Cited PDF as well as links to websites with detailed information
and examples on these topics, such as Purdue Owl and Hacker Handbooks. Or come into the library and a librarian can help you.