Style Sheet: MLA (Modern Language Association) Style Citations

Style Sheet: MLA (Modern Language Association) Style Citations
In order to avoid plagiarism MLA style requires that you provide, in the text, brief
parenthetical references identifying the exact part of each work you quote or base your ideas
on. At the end of your paper, you must also provide an alphabetical list of “Works Cited”
listing the complete citation for each work referred to parenthetically or in the text of your
paper.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined in the University of California, Berkeley, Campus Code of Student
Conduct as follows:
Plagiarism is defined as the use of intellectual material produced by another person
without acknowledging its source. This includes […]:
a) Copying from the writings or works of others into one’s academic assignment
without attribution, or submitting such work as if it were one’s own;
b) Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment; or
c) Paraphrasing the characteristic or original phraseology, metaphor, or other
literary device of another without proper attribution.
(http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Style.html)
What’s the difference between quoting and paraphrasing?
Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They
must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.
Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words.
Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader
segment of the source and condensing it slightly. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the
original source.
How to use quotations and paraphrases
Making reference to works of others in your text
MLA format follows the author-page method of citation. This means that the author’s last
name and the page number(s) should always appear in the text, and a complete reference
should appear in your works cited list. The author’s name may appear either in the sentence
itself (a / c) or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase (b), but the page
number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence.
For example:
a) Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a “spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings” (263).
b) Romantic poetry is characterized by the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”
(Wordsworth 263).
c) Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).
NB Do not use p. or pp. to designate page numbers.

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If the work you are making reference to has no author, use an abbreviated version of the
work’s title. For non-print sources, such as films, TV series, pictures, or other media, or
electronic sources, include the name that begins the entry in the Works Cited page. For
example:
The UC Berkeley Campus Code of Student Conduct defines plagiarism as “the use of
intellectual material produced by another person without acknowledging its source” (Style
Sheets for Citing Resources).
Sometimes you may have to use indirect quotation. An indirect quotation 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. For example:
Miller himself said that “the story of Salesman is absurdly simple! It is about a salesman
and it’s his last day on the earth” (qtd. in Bigsby 104).
For works with more than two authors or editors use first author’s name and “et al.” (Latin: et
alii = and others).
Quotations
To indicate short quotations (fewer than four typed lines of prose or three lines of verse) in
your text, enclose the quotation within double quotation marks and incorporate it into your
text. Punctuation marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons should appear after the
parenthetical citation. Questions marks and exclamations marks should appear within the
quotation marks if they are a part of the quoted passage (then you still need a period after the
parenthetical citation!) but after the parenthetical citation if they are a part of your text.
“Incorporating” short quotations into your text means that you must be careful that the
grammatical forms and the sentence structure are correct. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary
to add or omit words or even change forms. All these changes must be indicated by using
brackets and ellipsis marks. For example:
Harold Bloom argues that “His [i. e. Graham Greene’s] more celebrated novels fade already
into the continuum of literary tradition” (8).
-> The additional information is given in square brackets.
-> A capital letter (His) is used with the first word of a direct quotation of a whole sentence.
-> Do not use a capital letter with the first word of a direct quotation of part of a sentence.
According to Lawrence we are all relieved that not everybody is as deluded as Willy “When
Biff says […] that his father ‘had the wrong dreams’” (57).
-> If you omit a word or words from a quotation you must indicate the deleted word(s) by
using ellipsis marks surrounded by square brackets.
-> For a quotation within a quotation you should use single quotation marks.
When Joachim tells Hans Castorp that Behrens is annoyed by patients who aren’t willing to
die, Hans Castorp says, “Daß [sic] geht nicht, daß man ihn so mir nichts, dir nichts –”, but
he can’t finish the sentence because he bursts out laughing (Mann 80).
-> Use [sic] (Latin = “so”, “thus”) to indicate that a mistake is in the source you are quoting
and not your own.

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If you quote poetry and you integrate the lines into your text, a slash (/) with a space on either
side is used to separate lines. For example:
In Julius Caesar, Antony begins his famous speech with “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,
lend me your ears; / I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (III.ii.75-76).
Long quotations (longer than four typed lines of prose and three typed lines of verse) are
placed in a free-standing block. Quotation marks are omitted. Start the quotation on a new
line, indented one inch (2.54 cm) from the left margin. Your parenthetical citation should
come after the closing punctuation mark. For example:
In his essay “The Right Dream in Miller’s Death of a Salesman”, Lawrence concludes that
Willy’s dreams may not be so wrong after all.
The Works Cited List
Basic rules:
Willy may be deluded but his only delusion is that he thinks men can
be magnificent because they love. This is not the error of a petty man.
Willy is a dreamer. But part of the dream is good. […] Attention must
be paid to Willy Loman because he believes in love, which is only the
extreme form of being well liked. (59)
- 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 the same author, order them alphabetically by
title, and use three hyphens in place of the author’s name.
- 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 citation.
- 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.
BOOKS
General Format Author#1LastName, FirstName(s), and Author#2FirstName(s) Last Name.
Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication.
Single author Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Multiple authors Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of
Research. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.
For works by more than three authors or editors, you may list all as above or
only the first followed by a comma and “et al.”
Translated Work Racine, Jean. Jean Racine’s Phaedra: A Tragedy: A New Verse Translation of
Phèdre. Trans. Edwin Morgan. Manchester, Eng.: Carcanet, 2000.
Multi-volume work Dostoyesvky, Fyodor. The Unpublished Dostoyesky: Diaries and Notebooks
(1860-81). Ed. Carl R. Proffer. Trans. T. S. Berczynski, et al. 3 vols. Ann
Arbor: Ardis, 1973-1976.
No author named The Bible with Sources Revealed: A New View into the Five Books of Moses.
1st ed. Trans. and commentary Richard Elliot Friedmann. San Francisco:
Harper, 2003.

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CHAPTER IN A BOOK or WORK IN AN ANTHOLOGY or COLLECTION
General Format AuthorLastName, FirstName(s). “Title of Book Chapter or Work in Other
Collection.” Title of Book, Anthology, or Collection. Place of Publication:
Publisher, Date of Publication. Page Numbers.
Chapter in a book Johnson, D. Barton. “Nabokov and the Sixties.” Discourse and Ideology in
Nabokov’s Prose. Ed. David H. J. Larmour. London: Routledge, 2002.
139-49.
Work in anthology Allende, Isabel. “Toad’s Mouth.” Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. A Hammock
beneath the Mangoes: Stories from Latin America. Ed. Thomas Colchie.
New York: Plume, 1992. 83-88.
MAGAZINE ARTICLES
General Format Author’sLastName, FirstName(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Magazine Day
Month Year of Publication: page numbers.
No author named “The Decade of the Spy.” Newsweek 7 Mar. 1994: 26-27.
Author named Heiling, Jean M. “E-Global Library: The Academic Campus Library Meets
the Internet.” Searcher June 2001: 34-42.
NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
General Format Author’sLastName, FirstName(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Newspaper [City
of Publication if not in Title] Day Month Year of Publication, edition: page
numbers.
Fabricant, Florence. “From Italy, A New Culinary Movement Offers a Wry
Answer to Fast Food.” New York Times 15 Nov. 1989, national ed.: B6-7.
A WEBSITE or WEB PAGE WITHIN A WEBSITE
General Format AuthorLastName, FirstName(s). “Title: Subtitle of Part of Web Page, if
appropriate.” Title. Subtitle of Page. Publishing Agency, If Given. Date of
Electronic Publication or other Date, such as Last Updated. Day Month
Published by an
academic institution
Year of access .
A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples. Div. of Classics, Dept. of
Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures, & Cultures, U of Kentucky. 1
Apr. 2004 .
For more information cf. UC Berkeley Library at
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Style.html.