Encyclopedia > MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
The Modern Language Association's (MLA) style manual is an academic style guide. It prescribes a writing style most often used in English studies, comparative literature, foreign-language, literary criticism, and some other fields in the humanities. The Modern Language Association of America (often abbreviated MLA) is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of literature and literary criticism. ... Style guides generally give guidance on language use. ... In literary criticism, the term English studies is occasionally used to refer to the critical study of English literature. ... Comparative literature, colloquially abbreviated comp. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... The humanities are a group of academic subjects united by a commitment to studying aspects of the human condition and a qualitative approach that generally prevents a single paradigm from coming to define any discipline. ...
MLA style uses a Works Cited Page to list works at the end of the paper. Brief parenthetical citations, which include an author and page (if applicable), are used within the text. These direct readers to work of the author on the list of works cited, and the page of the work where the information is located (e.g. (Smith 107) refers the reader to page 107 of the work by author Smith).
Citation
Examples follow:
A book:
Conway, John Horton. On Numbers and Games. 2nd ed. Massachusetts: A K Peters, 2001.
An Encyclopedia or Dictionary:
Mohanty, Jitendra M. "Indian Philosophy." The New Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia. 15th ed. 1987.
A Periodical:
Rout, Kathleen. "Dream a Little Dream of Me: Mrs. May and the Bull in Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf.'" Studies in Short Fiction 16 (1979): 233-34.
A website:
"Plagiarism." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Jul. 2004, 10:55 UTC. 10 Aug. 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism>.
Note that MLA style calls for both the date of publication (or its latest update) and the date on which the information was retrieved.
Reference
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, ISBN 0873529863.
MLA documentation is commonly used in English and foreign language and literature courses, as well as in other disciplines in the humanities.
In the 2003 MLAHandbook for Writers of ResearchPapers (New York: MLA), the MLA recommends the use of a parenthetical system of documentation.
With the MLA parenthetical system, you will place citations in parentheses within your text to point to sources in an alphabetized list of works cited that appears at the end of your paper.
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