Writer's Style Guide - Citing Sources

Writer's Style Guide

Citing Sources

Passing off other people's ideas as your own would be plagiarism. It is a major academic offence.

You do not need to cite sources for matters of common knowledge. It is hard for some students to know what is "common knowledge," but it becomes easier with experience. Assigned readings are not "common knowledge"; cite these sources even though your instructor will know where you obtained your information.

You must document your sources in two ways:

In parenthetical documentation within the body of your piece of writing
In your "Works Cited" list at the end

Parenthetical Documentation

If you use someone's words or ideas, cite the source—normally including the page number—in parentheses. (For electronic sources such as Web pages or online journals, cite the paragraph number.)

Steinbeck's female characters are often strong people who "guide their husbands through their moments of instability" (Falkenberg 17).

Steinbeck often created strong female characters who were able to guide their husbands through moments of instability (Falkenberg 17).

If you mention the author's name in your text, cite only the page number:

Falkenberg notes that Steinbeck created strong female characters who were able to guide their husbands through moments of instability (17).

If you are acknowledging an entire work, you can simply include the name of the work and its author in your text. An example is "Ray Carver earned his reputation as a 'dirty realist' with What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, a collection of tales of woe from the dark side of the American dream."

If you are citing a play, include the act, scene, and line numbers—not the page.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, we are told that "The play's the thing" (2.2.633).

MLA style generally does not use footnotes (at the bottom of a page) or endnotes (at the end of an essay). On occasion, however, you may need to use a footnote or endnote for a comment that would distract the reader from the main point of your writing. A footnote is used for that kind of comment in "Examples of Works Cited (MLA Style)" later in this guide.

List of Works Cited

At the end of your piece of writing, list all the source materials that you have cited. Do this in a "Works Cited" list in alphabetical order. Use the following guidelines when making the list:

Centre the heading "Works Cited" near the top of your page. Leave a double space after the heading before beginning the first entry.
Begin your entry flush with the left-hand margin. If the entry runs to a second line, indent that line by at least one centimetre or five spaces.
Use the punctuation shown in the "Examples of Works Cited (MLA Style)" part of this style guide.
Where an author's name would be repeated in the list of works cited, replace the name with three hyphens and a period.
If no place of publication or publisher is given, write n.p. For no date, write n.d. For no page, write n. pag.
For printed works, use this general order of information in your citation:
- Author's name
- Title of a part of the work
- Title of the work
- Name of editor, compiler, or translator
- Edition used
- Volume number(s)
- Place of publication
- Name of publisher
- Date of publication
- Page, section, or paragraph numbers

Sometimes your assignment directions may require you to include a bibliography. MLA style generally avoids the term bibliography because it literally means a "description of books" and therefore appears to exclude non-print materials. In practice, however, the expectation is likely to be what MLA style calls a list of works consulted. In a "bibliography" in that sense, include not only the works that you cited in your paper but also other relevant works that you consulted.