MLA

1. Page setup

2. Parenthetical documentation

3. Works Cited

Page setup

(exit to paper)

Group Questions

What does MLA stand for?

What is better for college level research: popular or scholarly resources? Why?

What is a signal phrase? Example?

What does a works cited page include? Why are you providing readers with this information?

Why use sources?

provide background information

explaining terms or concepts

supporting your claims

lending authority to your argument

anticipating countering objections

How?

1. introduce a source with a signal phrase that includes the name of the author.

2. follow the cited material with a page number in parentheses

3. include in a list of works cited at the end of the paper

citing after introducing the author:

In her introduction to the Oxford version of Jane Austen’s selected letters, Vivien Jones states that, “The 161 letters which have survived are a tiny fraction of the thousands Austen must have written and received” (xiii).

citing without mentioning author

Robert Adams Day is only one of many critics who agree that, “The epistolary novel had a significant impact on the style of the nineteenth and twentieth-century novel” (Bray, 108).

citing without a quote

In fact, two of her six novels, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, were probably epistolary in their original forms (Bray, 115), and her posthumously-published novel Lady Susan is entirely epistolary.

When should I use quotes?

When language is particularly vivid or expressive

when exact wording is needed for technical accuracy

when it is important to let the debaters of an issue explain their positions in their own words

when the words of an authority lend weight to an argument

when the language of a source is the topic of your discussion (as in analysis or interpretation

The long quote

(exit to paper)

used for a quote of more than four lines of prose or three lines of poetry

indented one inch from left margin

no quotation marks

citation is outside of the final punctuation

It’s all in your book

suggested signal phrases to integrate a source (BH p. 509)

When to cite (BH p. 498-503)

Integrating sources (BH p. 504-516)

In-text citing reference chart (BH p. 519)

Works cited page reference chart (BH p. 530-531)

Your turn

(library access)

source integration