MLABibliographic Information

and Documentation:How to Get It Right

(incl. modifications)by Dr. Carter

The purposes of documentation are to make it possible for someone else to check the validity of your research, to disclaim authorship of ideas and information, to give credit to the original author(s), and to help other scholars in their own research. So there are specific rules to make these jobs easier.

Start with the author’s name. Put the last name first for easy alphabetizing (this is the ONLY place you invert the name):

Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy Tree. New York: Tricknor, 1984. Print.

Sometimes you have two or three authors: then you invert the first name but NOT the second or third one. Separate the names with a comma:

Ashby, Eric, and Mary Anderson. The Rise of the Student

in Britain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970. Print.

Sebranek, Patrick, et al. Write for College. Wilmington

MA: Write Source, 1997. Print.

Sometimes you have more than three authors: then you may invert the first name and add “et al.” (Latin for “and others”). You still use a comma:

The same rules apply to the names of editors, but you add “, ed.” or “, eds.” to show that they’re not authors:

Mitchell, Jack M., ed. The Poetry of Robert Frost. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975. Print.

Siegal, Mark, et al., eds. Gambling. Wylie, TX: Information Plus, 1994. Print.

Sometimes you have both an author and an editor. The author’s name (inverted) goes before the title and the editor’s after it (not inverted):

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Oxford Sherlock Holmes. Ed. Owen Dudley Edwards. 9 vols.

New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.

Sometimes a source doesn’t have an author. Then you start with the title:

A Guide to Australia. Sydney: Australian Information Service, 1982. Print.

The titles of major works, like books, magazines, journals, movies, plays, operas, CDs, etc. should be italicized:

Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy Tree. New York: Tricknor, 1984. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Henry IV Part 1. New York: Washington

Square, 1994. Print.

The titles of parts of works like articles, essays, short stories, songs, etc. appear in quotation marks:

Elson, John T. “Much Ado.” Time 19 Jan. 1976: 17. Print.

McCrank, Lawrence J. “Libraries.” Dictionary of the Middle

Ages. Ed. Joseph R. Strayer. Vol. 7. New York: Scribner’s, 1986. Print.

The same rule applies to web pages and web sites and to sound recordings:

“Marco Polo and His Travels.” The Silk Road. Web. 28 Feb. 2006.

The Wailers. “Get Up, Stand Up.” By Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Burnin’.

Island, 1973. CD.

The last element of the entry is the publication information, which gives the reader some directions on finding the text in question. In the case of books, it is based on the quaint notion that you would mail the publisher a letter, so it includes the city, the name of the publisher, and the year of publication:

Bailey, Sydney D. British Parliamentary Democracy. 3rd ed.

Boston: Houghton, 1971. Print.

For the place of publication, the state is omitted if the city is well known; otherwise, use the Post Office abbreviation:

Lifton, Robert Jay, ed. The Woman in America. Boston: Houghton, 1965. Print.

Siegal, Mark, et al., eds. Gambling. Wylie, TX: Information Plus, 1994. Print.

If there are many cities to choose from, pick the first or the first one noted. If there is no place of publication listed, put “n. p.” :

Van Loon, Hendrik Willem. The Story of Mankind. n.p.: Liveright, 1972. Print.

When citing the publisher, omit all unnecessary words, such as “A,” “The,” “Publisher,” “Press,” “Inc.,” “Co., or “Ltd.”

Lehan, Richard D. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Craft of

Fiction. New York: Viking, 1966. Print.

Abbreviate “University Press” as “UP.”

Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of

the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.

The publication element ends with the year if it is for a book, or the date for a magazine (followed by the page numbers). Abbreviate the month.

Hesse, Herman. Beneath the Wheel. Trans. Michael Roloff. New York: Farrar, 1968. Print.

Bazell, Robert. “Science and Society: Growth Industry.” New

Republic 15 Mar. 1993: 13-14. Print.

If there is no year of publication, put “n. d.”:

Simons, Gerald. Barbarian Europe. New York: Time-Life, n.d. Print.

The last element is the medium of the work. If it is a printed text, put “Print.”

Airne, C.W. The Story of Prehistoric and Roman Britain. Manchester: Sankey, Hudson. n.d. Print.

Sometimes you get a book in a series. The name of the series and the book’s number in the series go after the word “Print.”

Miller, David Lee, and Alexander Dunlop, eds. Approaches to Teaching Spenser's Faerie Queene. New York: MLA, 1994. Print. Approaches to Teaching World Literature 50.

If it is a website, put “Web.” and the date accessed it.

“The Hundred Years War: Overview.” eHistory. Ohio State University. Web. 15 Sept. 2009.