| This guide
provides basic guidelines and examples for creating a list of works
cited.
To find out how to cite an item in the body of your
essay, please see MLA Citation Style
Guide II: Parenthetical References
BASIC GUIDELINES
- MLA prefers the term Works Cited to Bibliography or Literature
Cited.
- The list of works cited appears at the end of the paper, on a
new page.
- Centre the title, Works Cited, an inch from the top of the page
and then double space between the title and the first entry.
- Begin each entry flush with the left margin, indenting subsequent
lines of the entry five spaces.
- Double-space the entire list, between and within entries.
- Alphabetize entries by the author's last name. If the author's
name is unknown, alphabetize by title (ignore the initial A, An,
The).
- The author's name should appear as given in the work (usually
in full).
- Every important word of the title is capitalized.
CITING PRINT SOURCES
Please note: to save space, double spacing is not used in the examples
BOOK
Osteen, Mark. American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogues
with Culture.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
BOOK ARTICLE OR CHAPTER
Bentley, Nancy. "Edith Wharton and the Science of Manners." The
Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. Ed. Millicent Bell. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1995. 47-67.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Jones, Carolyn M. "Southern Landscape as Psychic Landscape in Toni
Morrison's Fiction."
Studies in the Literary Imagination 31.2 (1998): 37-48.
NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE ARTICLE
Pevere, Geoff. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being Ang Lee." The
Toronto Star 8 Dec. 2000: D17.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE
Chaput, Catherine. "Hyperreality." Encyclopedia of Postmodernism.
Ed. Victor E. Taylor and
Charles E. Winquist. London: Routledge, 2001. 182-84.
GOVERNMENT PUBLICATION
Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Canadian
Heritage. A Sense of Place, a Sense of Being : The Evolving Role
of the Federal Government in Support of Culture in Canada : Ninth
Report. Chair Clifford Lincoln. Ottawa: The Committee, 1999.
THESIS
Marsden, John Lloyd. "After Modernism: Representations of the Past
in the Novels of Graham Swift (Nineteen Eighties Realism)." Diss.
Ohio U, 1996.
CITING ELECTRONIC SOURCES
DOCUMENT WITHIN A SCHOLARLY PROJECT OR PERSONAL OR PROFESSIONAL
SITE
Padgett, John B. "William Faulkner Chronology." William Faulkner
on the Web. Ed. John B. Padgett. 31 May 2000.University of Mississippi.
12 Feb. 2001. <http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/chronology.html/>.
Entries should include:
Author and title of the document
Title of the project or Web page (underlined) and the name of the
editor of the project (if given)
Date of electronic publication or latest update and name of any sponsoring
institution of organization
Date of access and URL
NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE ARTICLE FROM AN ONLINE SERVICE (such as
ProQuest)
Jones, Kent. "Hal Hartley: The Book I Read Was in Your Eyes." Film
Comment 32.4 (1996): 68-72. ProQuest. Mount Allison Libraries,
Sackville, NB. 8 Feb. 2001. <http://www.umi.com/pqdauto>.
Include:
Name of the database used (underlined), if known (i.e. ABI/INFORM
Global)
Name of the service (i.e. ProQuest)
Name of the library
Date of access and URL of the service's home page
ARTICLE IN AN ONLINE PERIODICAL
Miller, Laura, and Maria Russo. "It's a Plot: Salon's Book Editors
Pick the 10 Most
Paranoid Tomes of All Time." Salon 13 Feb. 2001. 21 Feb.
2001.
<http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/02/13/books_list/index.html>.
Include: Author and title of the article
Name of the periodical (and volume and issue number, if known)
Date of publication
Number range or total number of pages, paragraphs or other sections,
if they are numbered
Date of access and URL
This guide is based on the MLA Handbook.
For more detailed information, or for examples not included here,
see:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of
Research Papers. 5th ed. New York:
Modern Languages Association of America, 1999. LB 2369 .G53 1999 REF return to top |
