ENGL 2121: British Literature I

MLA (from the Modern Language Association) is a citation style commonly used in the humanities. View the below PowerPoint presentation for an introduction to MLA.

1" Margins

12pt Font, double-spaced

Create a running header with your last name and page number (header sometimes ommited from first page)

List Name, Instructor, Course, and Date in upper-left corner of first page

With author in sentence:

Naomi Wolf argues that women's magazines have instilled a message that women have to look a certain way to experience happiness and excitement (61).

Without author in sentence:

"A girl learns that stories happen to 'beautiful' women, whether they are interesting or not" (Wolf 61).

Book, 1 Author

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Print.

Book, 2 Authors

Beecher, Willard, and Marguerite Beecher. Beyond Success and Failure. Marina Del Ray, CA: Julian Press, 1966. Print.

Book, No Author

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Seabury Press, 1979. Print

Article in a Book/Encyclopedia

Hubbard, Kim, Anne-Marie O'Neill, and Christina Cheakalos. "Out of Control." Abnormal Psychology: Essential Cases and Readings. Ed. Thomas Bradbury and Cindy Yee-Brandbury. New York: W.W.  Norton & Company, 2002. 266-269. Print.

Journal Article, 3 authors

Green, Cheryl, Walter Knysz, III, and Ming T. Tsuang. "A Homeless Person With Bipolar Disorder and a History of Serious Self-Mutilation." American Journal of Psychiatry 157.1 (2000): 1392-1397. Print.

Aarticle Accessed From Electronic Database (more than 3 authors)

Coulton, Keith, et al. "Eleni's Creepy Cookies."  People Magazine. 26 Oct. 2009: 100. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOHost. Web. 10 Nov. 2009.

Webpage

The Chronicle of Higher Education. "Are Too Many Students Going to College?" The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2009. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. 

Movie

The Dutchess. Dir. Saul Dibb. Perf. Kiera Knightly, Ralph Fiennes, and Charlotte Rampling. Paramount Vantage, 2008. Film.

No more underlining: Titles of larger works (books, magazines) are now italicized; titles of smaller works (poems, articles) are put in quotation marks.

No more Web sites: URLs are no longer necessary in a works cited list.

Continuous page numbers: You no longer have to worry about whether or not a scholarly journal has continuous pagination.  Always provide the issue number when there is one available.

Medium format: Every entry must include the medium of publication.  Usually Print or Web, for others check with the handbook. 

New abbreviations for electronic resources: Use n.p. when no publisher is given; use n.d. when no date of publication is given; use n.pag. when no pagination is given.

No more library information: If an article is retrieved from an online database, cite the database name in italics (ex. JSTOR).  Library subscription information is no longer needed.