Papers documented
with MLA (Modern Language
Associates) formatting contain the
following:
A Works Cited
section that lists all
sources cited in the paper and
is located at the end of the
paper.
Parenthetical
references for material
borrowed from another source to direct readers
to the Works Cited section.
Numbered
footnotes or endnotes.
These document commentary or
explanation and bibliographical
notes.
GUIDELINES FOR PREPARING A WORKS
CITED PAGE
Begin you Works
Cited list on a separate
page, but continue page numbers
into the Works Cited Section.
If you paper ends on page 5, the
first page number for the Works
Cited Section would be page 6.
Center the words
Works Cited at the top of the
page, do not underline or put
quotations marks around Works
Cited.
Double space
citations and between them.
Begin the
citation entry flush left.
Successive lines are indented 5
spaces or one-half inch.
List entries in
alphabetical order. If you
list two books by the same
author, alphabetize by title.
PUNCTUATION AND CAPITALIZATION
Capitalize all
words in a title except:
articles (a, an, and the); short
prepositions or conjunctions
(and, but, or).
Underline titles
of books, plays, long poems,
pamphlets, periodicals, and
films.
Use quotation
marks around titles of short
works such as magazine articles,
short stories, song titles, and
for titles of unpublished works,
i.e. dissertations, lectures and
speeches.
Lowercase
abbreviations may be used for:
naming parts of a book:
vol. for volume, trans. for
translator, ed. for editor.
When these designations follow a
period, they must be
capitalized.
Author, title,
and publication information must
be separated by a period and
followed by one space.
Use a colon
to separate
the volume
number and
year of a
periodical
from the
page
numbers.
Abbreviations:
Based on the
MLA
Handbook,
6th ed.
Gibaldi,
Joseph.
The MLA
Handbook for
Writers of
Research.
6th ed.
New York: Modern.
