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Rhetoric & Composition 2: Writing About Literature: Citing in MLA

What is MLA?

MLA, 8th Edition

MLA style is a system for documenting sources in scholarly writing. For over half a century, it has been widely adopted for classroom instruction and used worldwide by scholars, journal publishers, and academic and commercial presses.

Works today are published in a dizzying range of formats. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. MLA style was updated in 2016 to meet the challenges facing today’s researchers. It recommends one universal set of guidelines that writers can apply to any type of source. Entries in the list of works cited are composed of facts common to most works—the MLA core elements. Works are cited in the text with brief parenthetical citations keyed to the list of works cited.

 

Source: MLA Website (verbatim quote)

 

Works Cited- Placed at the end of your paper, this is a list of sources which you borrowed ideas/quotes from and cited in the text of your paper.

Works Consulted- Placed at the end of your paper, this is a list of sources which includes: 1) sources which you borrowed ideas/quotes from, and which are cited in the text of your paper; and 2) sources which you read but did not cite in-text or borrow from.

Click here to see a general template, which includes the sequence of each part and punctuation format.

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