MLA-Style Documentation

MLA-Style Documentation
for HUM 210 Assignments, Winter 2004, Prof. Cora Agatucci
URL of this webpage: http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum210/coursepack/MLAstyle.htm
Short Cuts on this web page:
MLA PRINT sources: Print Newspaper Articles | Print Magazine Articles | Books & Encyclopedia Articles
MLA ELECTRONIC sources: EBSCO or other electronic database article from Library Subscription service |
World Wide Web sites & pages (freely available to all)
**NEW** MORE MLA Style models for Cora's handouts & HUM 210 Films (updated 2/3/04)
Additional Resources & Models for MLA Style documentation & see Cora with questions!

MLA: Newspaper Articles

Daily Newspaper with Lettered Sections:

Murphy, Sean P. "Decisions on Status of Tribes Draw Fire." Boston Globe 27 Mar. 2001: A2.

Daily Newspaper specifies Edition, has Numbered Sections; and/or is not printed on consecutive pages:

Wilford, John Noble. "In a Golden Age of Discovery, Faraway Worlds Beckon." New York Times
9 Feb. 1997, late ed., sec. 1: 1+.

Troubleshooting: Unknown author? Begin the entry with the article's title.

***

MLA: Magazine & Journal Articles

Magazine issued weekly:

Lord, Lewis. "There's Something about Mary Todd." U.S. News and World Report 19 Feb. 2001:
53.

Magazine issued monthly and/or is not printed on consecutive pages:

Kaplan, Robert D. "History Moving North." Atlantic Monthly Feb. 1997: 21+.

***
Journal Article:

Wood, Michael. "Broken Dates: Fiction and the Century." Kenyon Review 22.3 (2000):
50-64.

MLA: Books

Plath, Sylvia. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Karen V. Kukil. New York:
Anchor-Doubleday, 2000.

Odell, Noell. "Mallory and Irvine's Attempt." Points Unknown: A Century of Great Exploration. Ed.
David Roberts. New York: Norton, 2000. 161-72.

Powell, Kevin, ed. Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature.
New York: Wiley, 2000.

Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Wheaton: Tyndale, 1996.

***

Troubleshooting: Multiple authors?
Name the authors in the order in which they are listed in the source.

Reverse the name of the first author only. Examples:

Walker, Janice R., and Todd Taylor.

Wilmut, Ian, Keith Campbell, and Colin Tudge.

MLA: Encyclopedia and Reference Work entries

Well-known encyclopedias and dictionaries:

WITH AUTHOR listed:

Posner, Rebecca. "Romance Languages." The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia.
15th ed. 1987.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN:

"Sonata." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th ed. 2000.

Less familiar reference works require a fuller citation - note that the following example is for an article from a less familiar reference book for which the AUTHOR is UNKNOWN:

"Infections." The American Medical Association Family Medical Guide. Ed. Charles B. Clayman.
New York: Random, 1994.

MLA: EBSCO or other electronic database article from a Library Subscription Service

College and university libraries must subscribe to electronic databases such as EBSCO and Lexis-Nexis--that is, an academic library must buy subscriptions (that typically cost a lot of money!) so that its academic users (e.g. COCC students and staff) can access such electronic databases. Subscription-based electronic databases are not freely available to non-subscribers (vs. World Wide Web sites that are freely available to anyone who has an internet browser), so even if you were to try to transcribe the usually very lengthy URL of an EBSCO or Lexis Nexis article that you are citing, general non-authorized users would not be able to access it.

EBSCO JOURNAL ARTICLE:

Fitzgerald, Jill. "How Will Bilingual/ESL Programs in Literacy Change in the Next
Millennium?" Reading Research Quarterly 35.4 (2000). Academic Search Premier.
EBSCO. Central Oregon Community Coll. Lib., Bend, OR. 16 Oct. 2003.

LEXIS-NEXIS WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE ARTICLE:
Koretz, Gene. "Economic Trends: Uh-Oh, Warm Water." Business Week 21 July 1997: 22.
Academic Universe: Medical. Lexis-Nexis. Central Oregon Community Coll. Lib., Bend, OR. 16 Oct.
2003.
***

PERSONAL subscription service such as America Online:

When you access a work through a personal subscription service such as America Online, give the information about the source, followed by the name of the service, the date of access, and the keyword used to retrieve the source.

Conniff, Richard. "The House That John Built." Smithsonian Feb. 2001. America Online. 11 Mar. 2001.

Keyword: Smithsonian Magazine.

Freely-accessible World Wide Web source

Short work from a Web site - MLA
"Short" works are those that appear in quotation marks in MLA style: articles, poems, and other documents that are not book length. For a short work from a Web site, include as many of the following elements as apply and as are available:

Author's name
Title of the short work--i.e. title of the individual web page--in quotation marks
Date of the short work if given on the individual web page
Title of the site, underlined (or italicized)
Date of publication or last update of the web site.
Sponsor of the site (if not named as the author or in the title of the web site)
Date you accessed the source
The URL in angle brackets

NOTE: At least some of the above elements may not be unavailable on a WWW source. Again, include as many of the above elements as apply and as are available.
For example, in the following model, no date of publication was available. (The date given is the date on which the researcher accessed the source.)

WITH AUTHOR

Shiva, Vandana. "Bioethics: A Third World Issue." NativeWeb. [n.d.] 24 Oct. 2003
<http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/shiva.html>.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

"Media Giants." The Merchants of Cool. 2001. PBS Online. 23 Oct. 2003
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants>.

Article from Online Magazine

Levy, Steven. "Great Minds, Great Ideas." Newsweek 27 May 2002. 23 Oct. 2003
<http://www.msnbc.com/news/754336.asp>.

27. An entire Web site - MLA
Begin with the name of the author or corporate author (if known) and the title of the site, underlined (or italicized). Then give the names of any editors, the date of publication or last update, the name of any sponsoring organization, the date of access, and the URL in angle brackets. Provide as much of this information as is available.

WITH AUTHOR

Peterson, Susan Lynn. The Life of Martin Luther. 1999. 23 Oct. 2003

<http://pweb.netcom.com/~supeters/luther.htm>.

CORPORATE (GROUP) AUTHOR

United States Environmental Protection Agency. Values and Functions of Wetlands.

25 May 1999. 23 Oct. 2003 <http://www.epa.gov-owow/wetlands/facts/fact2.html>.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 18 Oct. 2000. History Dept., New York U. 23 Oct. 2003

<http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/>.

WITH EDITOR

Exploring Ancient World Cultures. Ed. Anthony F. Beavers. 1997. U of Evansville. 23 Oct. 2003

<http://eawc.evansville.edu/index.htm>.

NOTE: If the site has no title, substitute a description, such as "Home page," for the title.
Do not underline the words or put them in quotation marks.

Block, Marylaine. Home page. 5 Mar. 2001. 12 Apr. 2001 <http://www.marylaine.com>.

MORE MLA Models: Cora's Handouts & Films
(updated 2/3/04 & distributed in class in separate handout)

Cora's HUM 210 Handouts - EXAMPLE:

Agatucci, Cora, ed. "Epic Genre and Mahabharata." Handout, Humanities 210, Central Oregon Community
College, Winter 2004.

HUM 210 Films:

Mahabharata [Mini]. Dir. Peter Brook. Adapt. Jean-Claude Carrière. Perf. Robert Langdon Lloyd [Vyasa],
          Bruce Myers [Krishna], Sotigui Kouyaté [Bhishma], Miriam Goldschmidt [Kunti], Andrzej Seweryn
          [Yudishthira], Vittorio Mezzogiorno [Arjuna], Georges Corraface [Duryodhana], Jeffrey Kissoon
          [Karna], Mallika Sarabhai [Draupadi]. Videotape. Channel 4 Television/Brooklyn Academy of Music/
          Les Productions du 3ème Etage, 1989.

Seven Samurai [Japan: Shichinin no samurai]. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Wr. Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu
Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni. Perf. Takashi Shimura, Toshirô Mifune, Isao Kimura, Yoshio
Tsuchiya. Toho Co. Ltd., 1954. DVD. Janus Criterion Collection, 1998.

Whale Rider. Dir. Niki Caro. Perf. Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, Cliff
Curtis. South Pacific Pictures/ApolloMedia GmbH & Co. 5/Filmproduktion KG, 2002. DVD.
Newmarket Films, 2003.

Additional Resources on MLA Style

MLA: Modern Language Association, 2003
Home page: http://www.mla.org
Frequently Asked Questions about MLA Style (2003)
URL: http://www.mla.org/style_faq
How do I document sources from the Web in my Works Cited list?
URL: http://www.mla.org/publications/style/style_faq/style_faq4

Another useful online source for MLA-style documentation is:
Hacker & Fister's Research & Documentation Online (Bedford-St. Martin's):
URL: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/
Humanities: Documenting Sources: MLA Style
URL: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities/english.html
MLA List of Works Cited
URL: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities/list.html