Things You'll Need:
- Any research paper in the arts disciplines, referencing multiple sources.
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Step 1
Understand in-text citations. In MLA Format, sources are cited in the text, using parenthetical citation. The purpose of this parenthetical citation is just to point your reader to the right place in your works cited list, so that they can find your sources quickly and easily. Therefore, parenthetical citations should be short and to the point. In parenthesis after the quote or reference, you want to give only the information that is needed to easily identify the source. This will usually be only the author's last name, and a page number for the reference.
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Step 2
Know the exceptions. If you give the author's name in the body of the sentence however, the parenthesis should only contain a page number. There's no need to repeat the author's name twice for a reference. When you're citing Internet sources, you obviously won't have page numbers, but you will cite the source in the same way. Just omit the page numbers. If the online source uses line or paragraph numbers however, those are helpful to include. If no author's name is given in either a print or online source, you want to choose the most important word of the title to include in the parentheses with the page number if there is one.
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Step 3
Your parentheses will always come before the punctuation mark that ends the sentence or clause containing the reference. In the case of a multi-sentence reference, it will come just before the last punctuation mark that concludes the reference.
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Step 4
All of the works that you cite in your paper should be included on the works cited page, which is a separate age attached to the end of your paper. The purpose of this is both to ensure that there is no copyright infringement, and to help interested readers to find other things that they may be interested in reading. The works cited page is listed in alphabetical order by the first word of the reference, which should either be the author's last name, or in cases where there is no author, the first word of the title (omitting "the" and "a"). This will help readers to easily find what they are looking for in your works cited page. There should be a line space between each entry, but no bullet points or numbering. If the reference is more than one line long, subsequent lines are indented. Most citations include: author's name, article title (or book title), publication title (or publisher, if a book), publication date, and page numbers. Other information varies by source.
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Step 5
For more info, or specific examples of citations, check out the MLA Guide for Writers of Research Papers. It is the full list of rules and conventions for the MLA style of research writing.
