Citing Sources Made Simple

Know­ing how to cite your sources prop­erly can get con­fus­ing. Here (with a lot of help from Mr Durbin) is a sim­pli­fied guide for how to cite your var­i­ous types of sources accord­ing to the new MLA for­mat (2011). Of course, you can always use EasyBib.com How­ever I think that using this guide you might find it actu­ally eas­ier to do it on your own.  

Web Sites

To cite infor­ma­tion you find online, give the author’s name, last name first (if known) or the name of the orga­ni­za­tion; the full title of the web­page; the title of the home­page, the date of the doc­u­ment or update (if avail­able); the word “Web” and the date you read the infor­ma­tion. Dou­ble space every line and indent all but the first line.

(Web­sites of Orga­ni­za­tions)
Catholic Char­i­ties USA. “Cli­mate Change and Poverty.” Catholic Char­i­ties USA. Decem­ber
2008. Web. 23 March 2010.

(Scholarly/Academic Project)
Con­tem­po­rary Lit­er­a­ture. Ed. Lisa Braw­ley and James F. Lippi. 2009. Web. 1 Oct. 2010.

(Per­sonal Home Page)
Lan­cashire, Ian. Ian Lancashire’s Jour­ney . 28 Mar. 2007. Web. 15 May 2011.

(Oppos­ing Viewpoints/EBSCO/CLC or other library online data­bases )
Gable, Susan. “Global Energy Will Soon Be a Cri­sis.” Global Resources. San Diego: Green­haven Press, 2010. Gale Oppos­ing View­points in Con­text. 2011. Web. 5 May 2011.
*include page num­bers if available

(Arti­cle in a News­pa­per or Mag­a­zine pub­lished online)
Markoff, Jane. “Cell Phone Dan­ger.” New York Times. June 2010. Web. 4 Jan. 2011.

(Quo­ta­tion pub­lished Online)
Keats, John. Poet­i­cal Works. 1884. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Ed. Steven van Leeuwen. 2008. Web. 5 Nov. 2009.

(Online Ency­clo­pe­dia)
”The Bat­tle of the Somme.” Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­nica Online. Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­nica. 2011. Web. 14 Jan. 2011.

(Image pub­lished Online)
Cos­griff, Mal­colm. “My Issues.” Car­toon. Best Car­toons 1996 — 2008. 4 April 2004. Web. 6 Aug. 2009.

(Email)
Cite the author’s name (if known) or the author’s email or login name (the part of the email address before the @sign), fol­lowed by the sub­ject line of the post­ing, enclosed in quo­ta­tion marks; the date of the mes­sage if dif­fer­ent from the date accessed.

Hal­lo­ran, Erica. “Re: Pre­serv­ing Writ­ing.” E-mail to Denise C. Callen. Web. 21
May 2009.

Cit­ing Print Sources

(Book with one author)
Sea­grave, Steven. The Patri­ots’ Dynasty. New York: Harper Press, 2009. Print.

(Book with an edi­tor)
John­son, Stan­ley, ed. Coral Reefs. New York: Wiley, 2006. Print.

(Book with two authors)
Andrews, Deb­o­rah C., and William D. Andrews. Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. New York: Macmil­lan, 2006. Print.

(Book with three authors)
Alvarez, R. R., Ken­neth L. Brown, and Karen Rac­canello. Learn­ing to Speak Ital­ian: A
Guide­book. Bel­mont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 2009. Print.

(Book with more than 3 authors)
Mor­ris, Desmond, et. al. Best Loved Amer­ica Poetry. New York: Stein & Stein Pub., 2005.
Print.

(Signed Encyclopedia/Dictionary Topic)
Rupp, Ernest G. “Berbers.” The Ency­clo­pe­dia of World Cul­tures. 2005 ed. Print.

(Unsigned Encyclopedia/Dictionary Topic)
“Saudi Ara­bia.” World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia of Peo­ple and Places. 2007 ed. Print.

(Essay/Article in col­lec­tion)
Agee, James. “Comedy’s Great­est Era.” Con­tem­po­rary Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. Ed. Alfred Kazin. Detroit: Thomp­son Gale, 1997. 339–357. Print.

(Cit­ing the Bible)
To cite part of the Bible (if not men­tioned in text of paper), include the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion:
Name of the book of the Bible. Title of spe­cific ver­sion of the Bible that is used. Place of pub­li­ca­tion: Pub­lisher, Year of Pub­li­ca­tion. End the cita­tion with the word, ‘Print.”
Ezechial. The New Amer­i­can Bible. Wichita, Kansas: Fire­side Catholic Pub., 1987. Print.

(Two entries by the same author, book titles in alpha­bet­i­cal order)
White, David. My First Book. New York: Scrib­ner, 2008. Print.

—. My Sec­ond Book. New York: Scrib­ner, 2009. Print.

(Book with author and edi­tor or trans­la­tor)
Fitzger­ald, F. Scott. The Note­book of F. Scott Fitzger­ald. Ed. Matthew Broc­coli. New York: Har­court, 2000. Print.

Inter­views
Bush, George W. Inter­view with Con­nie Chung and Ted Kop­pel. Night­line. CNN. 5 April 2001. TV.
Lippi, Tom. Per­sonal inter­view. 5 Feb­ru­ary 2009. Inter­view.

TV Pro­gram
“Yes…but Is It Art?” Narr. Chris Matthews. Sixty Min­utes. CBS. WCBS, New York. 14 Jan.
2010. TV.

Par­en­thet­i­cal Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Print resources

Par­en­thet­i­cal Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Books listed in Works Cited

Usu­ally the author’s last name and a page ref­er­ence are enough to iden­tify the source and the
spe­cific loca­tion from which you bor­rowed mate­r­ial. Medieval Europe was a place both of “raids,
pil­lages, slav­ery, and extor­tion” (Townsend 10).

If the author’s name is in the text, pro­vide the pages from the author’s work. ex: Tan­nen has
argued this point (178 – 85). If the author’s name is ref­er­enced, include the author’s name
and the page num­bers. ex: This point has already been argued (Tan­nen 175 – 85).

Par­en­thet­i­cal Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Elec­tronic or Online resources
In par­en­thet­i­cal ref­er­ences in the elec­tronic text, works on the World Wide Web are cited just like printed works. For any type of source, you must include infor­ma­tion in your text that directs read­ers to the cor­rect entry in the works-cited list (see the MLA Hand­book, sec. 5.2). If a source has no author and is spon­sored by a cor­po­rate entity, such as an orga­ni­za­tion or a govt. agency, name the cor­po­rate entity as the author. Web doc­u­ments gen­er­ally do not have fixed page num­bers or any kind of sec­tion num­ber­ing. If your source lacks num­ber­ing, you have to omit num­bers from your par­en­thet­i­cal ref­er­ences. If your source includes fixed page num­bers or sec­tion num­ber­ing (such as num­ber­ing of para­graphs), cite the rel­e­vant num­bers. Give the appro­pri­ate abbre­vi­a­tion before the num­bers: “(Lippi, pars. 19–20).” (Pars. is the abbre­vi­a­tion for para­graphs. Com­mon abbre­vi­a­tions are listed in the MLA Hand­book, sec. 6.4) For a doc­u­ment on the Web, the page num­bers of a print­out should nor­mally not be cited, because the pag­i­na­tion may vary in dif­fer­ent printouts.

In-text Cita­tion Researchers have found that the risks of infec­tion from travel were small
com­pared with the risks from poor hygiene (Cen­ter for Dis­ease Control).

Periodicals/Magazines/Journals

(Mag­a­zine Arti­cle, signed)
Tift, Susan. “Who’s Teach­ing Our Chil­dren?” Time. 14 Nov. 2010: 58–64. Print.
Dra­belle, Den­nis. “The Hero Ath­lete as Myth.” Psy­chol­ogy Today. Nov. 2009: 65–68. Print.

(Mag­a­zine Arti­cle, unsigned)
“Class Con­flict.” Time. 14 Nov. 2001: 50. Print.

(News­pa­per arti­cle, signed)
Lewis, Flora. “The Bad News is Apa­thy.” New York Times. 9 Dec. 2009: A35. Print.

(News­pa­per article/editorial, unsigned)
“In 1938, the World Knew.” Edi­to­r­ial. New York Times. 9 Nov. 2008: C14. Print.

Pho­tographs

Tuch­sen, David. Fab­u­lous Pho­tos. 2005. Alameda Museum, Alameda CA. Print.

Maps
Cal­i­for­nia. Map. Chicago: Rand, 2005. Map.

Works Cited

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Hand­book for Writ­ers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: The Mod­ern Lan­guage Asso­ci­a­tion, 2009. Print.

Hacker, Diana. A Writer’s Ref­er­ence. 5th ed. Boston: Medford/St. Martin’s Press, 2003. Print.

If you are enjoy­ing this arti­cle, get future posts sent to your email for free. Click here