Revised 2009
If you use a piece of information or an idea that came from someone else— from a website, a book, a friend, a family member, an interview—you must name the source of your information. This is known as citing your sources. You must cite your sources in a very certain and specific way. Doing so is known as citing your sources using MLA formatting.
Quoting an author’s exact words in your paper:
Use as few of the author’s most important word and gracefully slip them into your own sentences. This is know as gracefully integrating the author’s words into your own writing:
Edith Hamilton, author of Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, notes that Greek mythology marked the end of the “terrifying irrational” concept of gods, and in fact, the Greeks “transformed a world full of terror into a world full of beauty” (18).
Changing the words in your quotes:
If you have to change any of the words of the quote to maintain logic or to keep the text in the present tense, use brackets [ ] to note the change; do not use parentheses ( ) because they have a different function in sentences:
Siddhartha tells his father that he would “rather die than obey [his] father” (12). (original text is “obey my father”)
Siddhartha “[gives] his clothes to a poor Brahmin on the road” (13). (original text is “Siddhartha gave his clothes…”)
You must cite when you paraphrase
Paraphrasing is summarizing an author’s words in your paper, putting the author’s words into your own words:
Greek mythology was the first mythology to have human-like gods. The Greeks could personally relate to their gods, and their gods were accessible to everyone. Furthermore, the actions and concerns of the gods were often similar to the actions and concerns of the people who worshipped them (Hamilton 16-20).
Notice that you never write (page 5) or (p.5). Simply write (author’s name 5) or simply (5).
Introducing the source:
The first time you cite a source, make sure you introduce the entire source, the medium as well as the author, as shown below:
In his online article, “The Greek Way,” Charles Atkins asserts that….
The website, Roman Heroes acknowledges…
The article, “Greek and Roman Mythology” in the World Book Encyclopedia mentions.
Properly cite your sources:
The first time a source is cited. introduce the author’s name, the text name or website, and the article name if necessary. After the quotation or paraphrase, place the page number in parenthesis if the quote is from a book or magazine. If it is from a non-paginated website, you need not have any parenthesis after the quote.
According to Ingri A’Aulaire in his text, Book of Greek Myths, for the Greeks, creation begins with love and the need for companionship. After Gaea, the Earth, emerges from the formless darkness, she is “young and lonesome, for nothing lived on her yet.” As if in answer to her yearnings, Uranus, the sky, looms above her, and they are “joined in love” (2). The fruits of that love are the mighty Titans, the first generation of Greek gods.
In a later paragraph, if you use the same source, you need not introduce the book, website, or article, but include the author’s name in parenthesis, if the book or essay has an author. If there is no author, put the first word of the works cited entry in the parenthesis:
…Rhea, who has given birth to Zeus and is tired of her husband’s insatiable appetite for their children, asks her mother, “Mother Earth, to help her save the child from his father” (A’Aulaire 4).
Signal phrases
Students often use the same “signal” phrases and verbs to introduce quotes, such as “Edith Hamilton says…..” or “Edith Hamilton writes….” But you can and should use a wide variety of verbs and phrases:
In the words of Edith Hamilton,…
As Edith Hamilton has noted,…
Edith Hamilton, author of Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, believes,…
Here are some other signal phrases
acknowledges
adds
admits
agrees
argues
asserts
believes
claims
comments
compares
confirms
contends
denies
describes
disputes
emphasizes
endorses
explains
grants
illustrates
implies
insists
notes
observes
offers
points out
reasons
refutes
rejects
reports
responds
suggests
thinks
Finally, commas and periods go AFTER the page number that is in parentheses. If you think about it, the page number logically goes in the sentence or with the part of the sentence where the quote is, not hanging out in limbo between sentences or with other unrelated parts of the sentence. Since the page citation refers to the quoted text, the page citation goes in the same sentence as the quoted text!
At the end of your paper, you must have a Works Cited and a Bibliography. What is the difference between the two?
1. All literally quoted or paraphrased sources that are used in your essay or research paper are listed on a WORKS CITED list. This list is provided at the end of your paper.
2. All sources that you research but do not literally quote or paraphrase in your essay or research paper are listed on a BIBLIOGRAPHY list. This list is also provided at the end of your paper.
3. The two different lists inform readers exactly how you use or became more knowledgeable from the information that you researched. Therefore, the two lists never reference the same sources.
4. For both the WORKS CITED and the BIBLIOGRAPHY, the following rules apply:
∑ List all sources in alphabetical order
∑ Do not use bullets, numbers, or other formatting; just list in alphabetical order
∑ All lines after the first line of an entry are indented. Use the bottom arrow tab and the shift key in your ruler at the top of the page in Word.
∑ Italicize all titles of movies, books, or plays
∑ Use quote marks for essays, poems, & other minor works
∑ If the two lists can fit on one page, by all means put them on one page.
∑ Everything in your Works Cited and Bibliography is double spaced. There are no extra spaces. Everything including the words Works Cited and Bibliography is in size 12 font, no bold or large font.
A HELPFUL NOTE: Use your computer to make your Works Cited and Bibliography at my favourite Works Cited site:
http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/index.php
Here is a sample of what a WORKS CITED and BIBLIOGRAPHY might look like (Except it should be double spaced):
Works Cited
O,Brother, Where Art Thou? Dirs. Coen, Ethan and Joel Coen. Perf. George Clooney, John Turturro,
Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Chris Thomas King. Touchstone
Pictures, 2000.
Paulsen, Gary. The Island. NH: Dell Publishers, 1988.
“Selected Seventeenth-Century Events.” Romantic Chronology. Ed. Laura Mandell and Alan Liu.
October 2001. University of California, Santa Barbara. 22 November 2003.http://humanties.
ucsb/projects/pack/rom-chrono/chronola.htm.
Small, Jr., Robert C. “The Literary Value of the Young Adult Novel.” Journal of Youth Services in
Libraries, Spring 1992: 227-285.
Bibliography
Delahunty, Andrew, Sheila Dignen, and Penny Stock. The Oxford Dictionary of Allusions. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Hamilton, Edith. Foreword. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. By Hamilton. New
York, NY: Warner Books, 1942.
Romance Languages and Literatures Home Page. 1 Jan 2003. Dept. of Romance Languages and
Literatures, University of Chicago Press. 8 July 2003. http://humanities.uchicago.edu/
romance/.
No comments:
Post a Comment