HOW TO DOCUMENT AND CITE VIEWPOINTS ESSAYS

When we write an essay in reaction to something we have read, we are required to provide our readers with the citation (or publication facts) of what we’ve read. We place this citation at the end of our essay.

Please be sure that the final copy of your essay contains a properly organized citation for the Viewpoints essay you are writing about.

Below are the general MLA format for Viewpoints citations, four examples using essays from the text, and information about how to cite words and ideas from the Viewpoints essay when you use that information in your essay. 

Modern Language Association (MLA) Format

General MLA format for our anthology:

Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. “Name of Essay.”  Viewpoints. Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7^th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010. (page numbers of article).

Specific MLA examples

Logan, Paul. “Zero.” Viewpoints. Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7^th ed. Boston, Wadsworth, 2010. (101-05).

Yeager, Jeff. “Less Is More.” Viewpoints. Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7^th ed. Boston, Wadsworth, 2010. (323-25).

Alcorn, Randy. “The Species Called Homo-Simpsons.” Viewpoints. Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7^th ed. Boston, Wadsworth, 2010. (145-47).

Galowicz, Susan. “Outsourcing Jobs Leaves the American White-Collar Worker Behind.” Viewpoints. Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7^th ed. Boston, Wadsworth, 2010. (343-45).

In-text MLA Citations:

· Place in parentheses the page number from which the wording or information comes.  Do NOT use "p" or "pg" before the page number--only the page number. 

· If it is unclear who the Viewpoints author is, place the author's LAST NAME in the parentheses before the page number with only a space (no comma or any punctuation) between the author's last name and the page number.

· When you begin a new paragraph, re-identify the Viewpoints author (last name only) when you first cite information in the new paragraph.

According to Logan, he "learned to blend into the crowd--to look, talk, and act like the popular kids" (102).

One author admits that he "learned to blend into the crowd--to look, talk, and act like the popular kids" (Logan 102).

Should you Cross-Reference Your Sources?

The following is taken from Purdue OWL

Note on Cross-referencing Several Items from One Anthology: If you cite more than one essay from the same edited collection, MLA indicates you may cross-reference within your works cited list in order to avoid writing out the publishing information for each separate essay. You should consider this option if you have several references from a single text. To do so, include a separate entry for the entire collection listed by the editor's name as below:

Rose, Shirley K., and Irwin Weiser, eds. The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1999. Print.

Then, for each individual essay from the collection, list the author's name in last name, first name format, the title of the essay, the editor's last name, and the page range:

L'Eplattenier, Barbara. "Finding Ourselves in the Past: An Argument for Historical Work on WPAs." Rose and Weiser 131-40.

Peeples, Tim. "'Seeing' the WPA With/Through Postmodern Mapping." Rose and Weiser 153-67.