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As an academic writer, you will be required to use documentation to support your ideas
and your point-of-view. Knowing the standard way to cite sources and to document
them is imperative. The one that we will use in class in MLA (Modern Language
Association.)
Two separate issues of documentation are involved when writing the academic paper:
embedding quotations and citing those citations.
Embedding Quotations:
Whether you paraphrase, summarize or quote directly, you must acknowledge that you did
so. The two most common ways to do so are
- Introduce the author, title and source in the sentence:
J. Brown in her article, "The Raven's Call,"
published in Time, states, "Nature
mimics life" (33).
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The direct quotation starts and ends with a quotation mark,
followed by the page number in parenthesis.
| The end punctuation follows the entire quotation.
2. Where the quotation is more pertinent than the author and the source:
Many times we don't understand how "nature mimics
life," so we don't pay attention to what happens to us (Brown 33).
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Here we use the quotation as part of our sentence; however, we have acknowledge that we
borrowed the idea from another by enclosing it in quotation marks.
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We end the sentence with the citation which includes the last name
and the page number--please note there is no punctuation or p. in front of the page
number.
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| The end punctuation follows the parenthesis.
To read more about embedding quotations, please read the
handout which addresses that issue.
The Works Cited Page
The second part to documentation is the Works Cited page. Traits include:
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the phrase, Works Cited, centered at the top of the final page of the document
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alphabetical listing of all sources USED in the paper
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| author, title, and source of all works listed in the paper.
This seems pretty simple; however, it really isn't when you think of the numerous types
of media that we use in our papers. Thus, you must use you handbook or the handouts I have
created for you to help with this. Please review the two handouts I have provided
for you to help: Electronic Sources and Traditional
Sources.
Take the MLA Quiz. Good luck!
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