What is MLA?

What Is MLA Style?

According to the Modern Language Association, "All fields of research agree on the need to document scholarly borrowings, but documentation conventions vary because of the different needs of scholarly disciplines. MLA style for documentation is widely used in the humanities, especially in writing on language and literature. Generally simpler and more concise than other styles, MLA style features brief parenthetical citations in the text keyed to an alphabetical list of works cited that appears at the end of the work".

Work Cited

"What is MLA Style?." Modern Language Association. MLA, 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014. <http://www.mla.org/style>.

In-Text Citation: MLA Style

In-Text Citations: MLA Basics, from Purdue's Owl
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab provides extensive guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style

The Librarians at Suffolk County Community College have made this short video tutorial in order to illustrate the rules of in-text citations in MLA:

Works Cited: Basic Format

Works Cited: the Basics from Purdue's OWL
According to MLA style, you must have a Works Cited page at the end of your research paper. All entries in the Works Cited page must correspond to the works cited in your main text. These guidelines from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) will help you craft your Works Cited.

The folks at Purdue's OWL have also created this online tutorial to guide you in the creation of your MLA-style Works Cited page.

Citing Electronic Resources

There are some basic pieces of information you should include when creating citations for electronic sources in MLA format. They are:

Author and/or editor names (if available)
Article name in quotation marks (if applicable)
Title of the Website, project, or book in italics.
Any version numbers available, including revisions, posting dates, volumes, or issue numbers.
Publisher information, including the publisher name and publishing date.
Take note of any page numbers (if available).
Medium of publication. (this should be Web)
Date you accessed the material.

Example:

"How to Make Vegetarian Chili." eHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2009.

Citing YouTube Videos

These guidelines were provided by the Purdue OWL and are an interepretation of MLA guidelines, as MLA has not provided a citation style for YouTube videos.

Required pieces:

Author’s Name or Poster’s Username. “Title of Image or Video.” Media Type. Name of Website. Name of Website’s Publisher, date of posting. Medium. date retrieved.

Here is an example of what that looks like:

Shimabukuro, Jake. "Ukulele Weeps by Jake Shimabukuro." Online video clip.
YouTube. YouTube, 22 Apr. 2006. Web. 9 Sept. 2010.