Citation is an important part of information literacy, because it helps you trace where your information came from and support it with evidence. It also gives credit to the original author, which helps you avoid plagiarizing their work. While there are lots of different citation styles, almost as many as there are disciplines to study, each contains the same elements that shows where the information was published and who created it.
MLA is the citation style of the humanities and social sciences. This is the style that you will use for any English classes that you take, so no matter what you are studying, it's a useful style to know. The good part about learning any citation style is that once you know one, it's easy to pick up another, since they do have similar formats and all use the same information.
Note for INFO 1010:
MLA 9 is the citation style you will use for your ENGL 2010 papers. Proper citations are also required for both the Module 4 and 5 assignments. Citations are very detail oriented and sensitive. Every period and comma are there for a purpose, and you need to be sure of each one. The additional resources and quick guides in the box to the bottom left are super helpful if this guide leaves you with more questions. Also, the librarians are always happy to help you with proper citation.
Citation StylesCitation style formats are guides on how to organize the information so that it's easily recognizable and others can find the sources used by an author. Think about the citation information as being the address or directions to locating the information. You need to know where exactly the address is located if you are going to find it. Maybe if you were using Google Maps to find an address, you could figure out where it was located still with some missing information, but maybe not. What if there were multiple cities with that street name. How would you know which one was right?
Citation formats are just like address formats in that they quickly tell us where the article, book, or video can be found and who created it.
Text in the body of the paper:
In his book, All About Unicycles, Jeff Barnes states, "The unicycle was the single most important invention of the nineteenth century" (29).
According to one historian, unicycles were "the single most important invention of the nineteenth century" (Barnes 29).
The invention of the unicycle in the nineteenth century is considered extremely important by at least one historian (Barnes 29).
The full citation as it would appear in the Works Cited page:
Barnes, Jeff. All About Unicycles. Winged Kitten Press, 2014.
Your Works Cited page is a list of all the sources that you've used in your paper. Your in-text citations are short notes that point to the full citation at the end that contains on the details in the proper format. Anything and everything you've cited in your paper should be cited in full on your works cited page. There should also not be anything on your works cited page that hasn't been cited in-text in your paper. So when your professor asks for a certain number of sources for your paper, they expect you to have cited them in your paper as well, not just listing them in your works cited page.
MLA 9 was created so it always follows the same format and order with the core elements of the source. If the source doesn't have a certain element, you simply skip it. Here is how a book and an article commonly look with the elements that commonly apply:
Books are considered containers, because they have smaller parts inside, and don't have volumes or issues, so the title is italicized and you skip to the publisher and date. When you are citing articles, you will cite the actual article you are using, as well as the container it's published in, or the journal or magazine title. Then you list the volume and issue that article is published in. Each journal or magazine will have a slightly different system of numbering the volumes and issues. Some newspapers and magazines will only have the date they were published because they are daily or weekly. Some will have a volume and issue number. Academic journals can be published less frequently, and will usually have both a volume or issue. Whatever the system, provide as much information as you have, in the proper formatting.
If you notice from the examples, your citations on the Works Cited page require you to use what is called a Hanging Indent. This is when the first line of the citation is flush left with the margins and all lines below it are indented by half an inch. There are different ways to do this depending on what word processor you are using, so here is how to do it in some common word processing options: Hanging Indents in Microsoft Word and Hanging Indents in Google Docs.
When listing sources on a works cited or references page, it might help to think of the citations as little sentences describing the information, separated with the appropriate punctuation. You will need to follow these structures for Module 4 Assignment, so pay close attention to the patterns so you can accurately create your own citations for your own sources.
Here are some tips to remember:
One of the newest additions in MLA 9 is the concept of containers, or the bigger work where the source is contained, such as in a book, journal, or subscription service such as a database. Books are considered containers because they are larger publications with smaller parts inside (chapters). Journals and magazines are containers because they contain articles. Databases are also considered containers because they contain journals and articles.
Databases are cited as a second container, the container the journals or books are stored in. This means you include the name of the database where you accessed the article, italicized, right before the URL (permalink for EBSCO databases) as a second container after the primary container (the journal the article was published in) at the end of the finished citation. This would also be used for a movie accessed through Netflix or other streaming service, etc.
In this example the primary container is the journal Community College Review, but the secondary container is the database it was accessed through, EBSCOhost.
Citation generators (such as the EBSCO database generator or products like BibTeX or Zotero) are really nice tools for saving time, but they aren't always 100% correct, so being familiar enough to spot the mistakes is always a good idea when using them. They save a lot of time in the copying and pasting and formatting departments, but don't forget to double check those citations for machine generated mistakes. The databases can only be as smart as the data entry, so things like ALLCAPS, mistakes in the DOI, or missing italics happen. Always make sure to proofread!
And when copying from EBSCO, make sure to merge formatting (Microsoft Office- Ctrl + m) or paste without formatting (Ctrl + Shift + v) to remove the funky tan/gray background, and to match the same font and style you are using. Be sure to add back in any italics or other formatting that will be removed if you paste without formatting.
You will be asked to create or use proper citations for both Module 4 and Module 5 assignments. These can be either created by hand or copy and pasted from the citation generator. However, either way you will have to carefully proofread to make sure these citations are correct and in a consistent format to the rest of your assignment. Common errors include having things in ALL CAPS or losing the italics when you merge the formatting. Make sure that you use the proper permalink or DOI as well.