The English Department of Sogang
University requires students majoring in literature to follow the MLA (Modern
Language Association) Style for citation and documentation.This
is an easy system which uses parenthetical references rather than end-
or footnotes. At the end of your
paper you place a ¡°Works Cited¡± page (which includes all of the
sources you have actually used) or ¡°Works Consulted¡± page (which
includes all of the sources you have looked at or used) rather than
a bibliography. This page includes all the information needed to find the
reference, whereas in the body of the essay itself, you cite your sources
by author name and page reference only.
In general, for on-line publications,
you need to provide the same kind of information as for traditional sources,
including, where possible, author, title, source, date, and page numbers.You
also need to provide the website address.Make
sure you transcribe this carefully, as any deviation will make it unreadable.The
address should be placed in < > as follows: <http://www.smartlink.net/~deej7/crusade.htm>.
Wherever you paraphrase or directly quote, you must provide the reference.Not to do so is to become guilty of plagiarism and you will be penalized. All reports are expected to express your own ideas in your own words.
The in-text reference comes directly after the quotation or paraphrase, and the final full stop comes AFTER not before the parentheses.Quotations are indented only when they are 4 lines or longer, and they are indented only from the left margin, not the right.They are spaced in the same way as the body of the paper (normally double-spaced).
Here are examples:
In one postmodern text, the sense of construction is apparent then the main character Offred says, ¡°This is a reconstruction.All of it is a reconstruction¡± (Atwood 144).
If your Works Cited page has more
than one text by Atwood, you need to indicate that in some way in your
parenthetical reference.The most
common way is to use part of the title, as below:
In one postmodern text, the sense of construction is apparent then the main character Offred says, ¡°This is a reconstruction.All of it is a reconstruction¡± (Atwood, Handmaid 144).
If you use the author¡¯s name in the preceding sentence, you only need to put the page number:
In her most famous postmodern text,
The Handmaid¡¯s Tale, Atwood writes, ¡°This is a reconstruction.All
of it is a reconstruction¡± (144).
The same principle applies whether it¡¯s a book or a journal article you¡¯re writing about; you provide the minimum information needed to be able to find that source in your Works Cited page.If there are two authors with the surname ¡°Smith¡± then you call one (J. Smith 55) and the other (F. Smith 465) depending on their first name.If there is no author, then you use part of the title in your reference.Basically, keep it as simple and clutter free as possible.
If you have a very long quotation, roughly one that takes up 4 lines of typed text, you will need to indent that long quotation.In this case, you do not need to use quotation marks (or inverted commas) because the indentation indicates that this is a quotation.This is the only time that end punctuation marks go before rather than after the parenthetical reference, as below:
In Margaret Atwood¡¯s The Handmaid¡¯s
Tale, the main character muses about the postmodern construction of
narrative:
When I get out of here, if I¡¯m ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, at yet another remove.It¡¯s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavours, in the air or on the tongue, half-colours, too many. (144)
Occasionally, even with a parenthetical system like the MLA, you will wish to use endnotes.These are called ¡°content¡± or ¡°explanatory¡± notes, and should be used sparingly.Generally, comments that you can¡¯t fit into the body of your essay should be omitted, unless they provide essential clarification or justification of what you have just written. You may, for example, which to use them to indicate why you¡¯ve chosen to use one source when another similar, more widely-used source is available, or to direct your reader to other sources which may be of interest, but which are not directly related to your main topic.
MLA Works Cited Page
Entries are double spaced, with the first line flush to the left, but second and subsequent lines of each entry are indented 5 spaces. (N.B. This does not work with a Web page, so the examples below are not indented in their 2nd lines). Entries are listed in alphabetical order. You can separate primary texts (the novels / plays / poems) from secondary texts (articles or books on the primary texts), but this is not strictly necessary.
You should use the first ¡°place¡± listed as a place of publication, not all of them.You should use the date of the edition you are using, though it is helpful if you can put in the first date of publication, too (see entry for Berger and Luckmann below).If there is no date, put N.d. If there is no place, put N.p. University presses can be abbreviated to UP.
If you are using a collection of essays, individual essays need to be cited individually, with page ranges provided.You can abbreviate the entries slightly in this case (see references to Phelan and Graff below).
In general, works cited references look like this.Please note the correct punctuation:
Single-authored texts:
Surname, First name.Title of Book.Place of publication: Publisher name, Year.
For two authors:
Surname, First name and First Name Surname.Title of Book.Place of publication: Publisher name, Year.
For more than two authors:
Surname, First name, et al. Title of Book.Place of publication: Publisher name, Year.
Editors:
Surname, First name, ed.Title of Book.Place of publication: Publisher name, Year.
For more than one book by an author
Cite the books alphabetically, and
in the second and subsequent references, replace the author¡¯s name with
---. (as below)
---. Title of Book.Place of publication: Publisher name, Year.
For journal or newspaper articles:
In general, an entry looks like this:
Surname, First Name. ¡°Article Title.¡± Journal Title Volume Number: Issue (Year): page range.
Sometimes only a volume number is available. That¡¯s fine; just omit the Issue.
For newspapers, you need to include the date, the section and page numbers.
For films, the entry usually begins with the title, and includes the director, the distributor, and the year of release. You may include other relevant information, such as the name of the writer or performer, between the title and the distributor.
It¡¯s a Wonderful Life. Dir.
Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, and Thomas
Mitchell. RKO, 1946.
For sound recordings, cite the composer, conductor, or performer first, depending on importance you wish to place on it. Then list the title, the artist, the manufacturer, and the year of issue (or n.d. if the year is unknown).Also indicate the medium, if you are not using a cd. Remember, all of this should be double spaced.
Ellington, Duke, cond. Duke Ellington
Orchestra. First Carnegie Hall Concert. Rec. 23 Jan. 1943. LP. Prestige,
1977.
Simon, Paul. The Rhythm of the Saints.Warner Bros., 1990.
For interviews, begin with
the name of the person interviewed. If the interview is published as part
of something else, enclose the title in quotation marks; if it is published
independently, italicise or underline the title. If it is untitled, just
write Interview. If you conducted it, give the name of the person interviewed,
the kind of interview (Personal Interview, Telephone Interview), and the
date.
Clinton, Bill. Personal Interview.
23 June 1999.
Fellini, Federico. ¡°The Long Interview.¡±
Juliet of the Spirits. Ed. Tullio Kezich. New York: Ballantine,
1966. 17-64.
Nader, Ralph. Interview with Ray Svarez.Talk of the Nation. Natl. Public Radio. WBUR,Boston. 16 Apr. 1998.
Below you¡¯ll find a list of sources which should cover just about any contingency; included are introductions, prefaces, works by a translator, mult-volume works and other complicated ones.
Aronstein,
Susan. ¡°¡®Not Exactly a Knight¡¯:Arthurian
Narrative and Recuperative Politics in the
Indiana Jones Trilogy.¡± Cinema
Journal 34.4 (1995): 3-30.
Atwood,
Margaret.Survival: A Thematic
Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: Anansi, 1972.
Baumeister,
Roy F.Escaping the Self: Alcoholism,
Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights from the Burden of Selfhood.N.p.:Basic
Books, 1991.
Baym,
Nina.Feminism and American Literary
History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 1992.
Berger,
Peter and Thomas Luckmann.The
Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology
of Knowledge.1966. London: Penguin,
1991.
Bland,
Elizabeth, ed. Exciting
Escape Stories: Action-Filled Adventures and Death-D efying Stunts.
London: Octopus, 1980.
Broyard,
Anatole.¡°One Critic¡¯s Fiction:
Tyler, Tracy and Wakefield.¡± Rev. of Earthly Possessions, by Anne
Tyler.New York Times Book Review
8 May 1977: 12.
Cohen,
Stanley, and Laurie Taylor.Escape
Attempts:The Theory and Practice
of Resistance to Everyday Life. 1976. 2nd. ed. London: Routledge, 1992.
Cox, James
M. ¡°Attacks on the Ending and Twain¡¯s Attack on Conscience.¡±Graff
and Phelan 305-312.
Delbanco,
Andrew.Introduction.Moby-Dick
or, the Whale.By Herman Melville.1851.New
York: Penguin, 1992.xi-xxviii.
Donoghue,
Denis.¡°Reading Blood Meridian.¡±Sewanee
Review 3 (1997): 401-18.
Escarpit,
Robert.The Sociology of Literature.Trans.
Ernest Pick.1958.2nd
ed.London:Frank
Cass, 1971.
Freud,
Sigmund.¡°Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.¡±The
Standard Edition of Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.Trans.
James Strachey.Vol. 9.London:
The Hogarth Press, 1959: 143-53.
Frye, Northrop.¡°Conclusion.¡±Literary
History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English. Ed. Carl F. Klinck.
Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1965.821-49.
Graff, Gerald,
and James Phelan, eds. Mark
Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study
of Critical Controversy.Boston:
Bedford Books of St. Martin¡¯s Press, 1995.
Hooper,
Walter, ed.Preface.Of
This and Other Worlds.By C.
S. Lewis.London: Collins, 1982.
Jehlen,
Myra.¡°Reading Gender in Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn.¡±Graff
and Phelan 505-518.