ETLA 100 -Baseball: More Than a Game

Documenting Your Sources: MLA Citation Style

Now that you’ve found and evaluated sources on your research topic, you are ready to document these sources. There are many great sites that explain why you must document your sources and show you the various documentation styles. Below are a few web sites that I think are particularly good.

Bedford St. Martin’s Diana Hacker Research and Documentation ( site

Choose “Humanities” and mouse over “Documenting Sources.”

Purdue University Online Writing Lab’s (OWL) MLA Formatting and Style Guide (

Scroll down the left side to see examples of MLA citation style.

Simon Fraser University Library Citation Guide: MLA – (

Scroll down to see the “Works Cited” examples.

Copies ofA Writer’s Reference (REF.PE1408 .H325 2009 ) and theMLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (LB2369 .G53 2009 )are available on permanent reserve—just ask at the Circulation Desk.

The E&H Writing Centercan help you with composition, grammar and documentation matters. The Writing Center is located in room 233 in McGlothlin Street Hall. Please call x6723 for operating hours and tutor schedules.

Hints to get you started:

  • Double-space throughout the citations/annotations.
  • Alphabetize the list by the last name of the author (or editors); if no author, alphabetize by the first work of the title other than A, An, or The.
  • Do not indent the first line of each works cited entry, but indent any additional line one-half inch (5 spaces).
  • In title of works, capitalize all words except articles (a, an, the), prepositions (into, between, and so on), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, etc.) – unless they are the first or last word of the title or subtitle.
  • Use quotation marks for title of articles and other short works, such as brief documents from Web sites.
  • Italicize titles of books and other long works, such as entire Web sites.
  • Give the city of publication without a state name.
  • For the date of publication, use the date on the title page or the most recent date on the copyright page.
  • For all works cited entries, include the medium in which a work was published, produced, or delivered.
  • Usually put the medium (capitalized) at the end of the citation. (ex. Print, Web).

Books – Print

Basic format for a book

Take the information about the book from its title page and copyright page. It is okay to use a short form of the publisher’s name; omit terms such as “Press,” “Inc.,” and “Co.” except when naming university presses (“Harvard University Press,” for example). If the copyright page lists more than one date, use the most recent one.

Books – Online

Wilmer, S. E. Theatre, Society, andtheNation: Staging American Identities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 5 Sept. 2012.

Journals - Print

Article in a journal: (paginated by volume or by issue)


Article in a monthly magazine:


Article in a weekly magazine:

Entire Web Site:

Web site with author:

Web site with no author:

Short work from a Web site:

Short work from a Web site Short works include articles, poems, and other documents that are not book length or that appear as internal pages on a Web site.

Short work with author:

Short work with no author:

Work from a database:

For a source retrieved from a library’s subscription database, first list the publication information for the source) and then provide information about the database.

Some “free” citation software: *Remember you are responsible for checking these against the citation style in your textbook – A Writer’s Reference or in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

KnightCite– (

EasyBib – (

Citation help from within a database:

Some library database offer citation “suggestions” in different citation styles. Remember you are responsible for checking these against the citation style in your textbook – A Writer’s Reference or in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

Some examples are listed below:

Credo Reference

"Smith, Anna Deveare." African-American Writers: A Dictionary. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Credo Reference.Web. 05 Sept. 2012.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Wilson, Paul J. "Crown Heights Riots." Dictionary of American History.Ed. Stanley I. Kutler.3rd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 466-467. Gale Virtual Reference Library.Web. 5 Sept. 2012.

Biography in Context

"The Week."National Review 15 Sept. 2003: 6. Gale Biography in Context.Web. 5 Sept. 2012.

Academic Search Complete

O'Connor, Jacqueline. "A One-Woman Riot": Brooklyn 1991 & Los Angeles 1992." Studies inthe Literary Imagination 40.2 (2007): 153-171. Academic Search Complete.Web. 5 Sept. 2012.

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