A Quick Guide to MLA FormEnglish 102

“Don’t hand your paper in without it.”

Dress for Success

• Rule Number One: an MLA paper looks like an MLA paper. – You only get one chance to make a first

impression. Show me that you know how to work in MLA style before I read a word.

– The easiest places to spot MLA errors are:• The heading• The page numbers• The works cited

A “Flyover View” 1

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Is this MLA?

“Flyover View” 2

What’s wrong with this picture?

Is this MLA?

MLA Citation: Begin at the End

• The List of Works Cited at the end of the paper is organized alphabetically by authors’ last names.

• To find out what to do if you don’t have the author’s name, see your reference book.– Check the index under MLA/Works

Cited/Directory to.– Tab the page with the directory, so you can get

there quickly.

Sample Works Cited Entries

Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” Literature: A World of

Writing. Ed. David L. Pike and Ana M. Acosta. Boston: Pearson/Longman, 2011. 459. Print.

Feldman, Paula R. “Women Poets and Anonymity in the Romantic Era.” New Literary History. 33.2 (Spring 2009) : 279-89. J-Stor. Web. 23 Oct. 2009.

Helpful Hints

• Articles from your textbook are “Works from an Anthology”

• Library database articles are “Works from a Database”

MLA Citation: In-Text Citation

• Go to the index in your reference book and find the entry for MLA; in-text citation; directory to.

• Find the directory and tab it.• KEEP IN MIND THAT IN-TEXT CITATION REFERS

TO THE PARENTHETICAL CITATION THAT LITERALLY HAPPENS WITHIN THE TEXT.

Sample In-Text CitationsPaula Feldman questions the importance of gender in the use of anonymity, arguing that “male poets seem to have used the subterfuge of anonymity and pseudonymity nearly as much as their female counterparts” (281).

Some critics have argued that anonymity may not have been as closely tied to gender as one might think (Feldman 281).

Poetry Sample In-Text Citation

• Keats only needed to hear the bird’s beautiful music to imagine all of this, but once the bird leaves so does his vision: “Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well / As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf / Adieu / adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades” (lines 73-75).

Sample Poetry Citation

In “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” Emily Dickinson personifies death as one who rides with the speaker in a carriage (lines 1-4). Noting that Death took His time, the speaker says “And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too, / For His Civility –”(6-8).

MLA Citation: The Popcorn Trail

• The in-text citation needs to lead back to the Works Cited.– Arrange the Works Cited first, so you know how it

works alphabetically.– Use whatever comes first (usually the author’s last

name) in the in-text citation, so that the reader can easily locate the source on the List of Works Cited.