MLA style manual

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Image:Mla cover.jpg Image:Mla style manual.jpg The Modern Language Association's (MLA) style manual is an academic style guide. It prescribes a writing style most often used in English studies, comparative literature, foreign-language, literary criticism, and some other fields in the humanities.

MLA style uses a Works Cited Page to list works at the end of the paper. Brief parenthetical citations, which include an author and page (if applicable), are used within the text. These direct readers to work of the author on the list of works cited, and the page of the work where the information is located (e.g. (Smith 107) refers the reader to page 107 of the work by author Smith).

There are two versions of the style manual. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, sixth edition (ISBN 0873529863), is meant for high school and undergraduate students. The MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, second edition (ISBN 0873526996) is meant for graduate students, scholars, and professional writers. Both versions are written by Joseph Gibaldi, and sanctioned by the Modern Language Association.

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Format

The MLA suggests that when creating a document on a computer you try to maintain a series of guidelines that make it easier for people to read a composition without causing the style to distract from the content.

Choose a standard, easy-to-read font. Times New Roman is suggested (and is often required).
Do not align text of the composition on the right or center, but on the left. Lines should not be justified. The titles should be centered.
Make sure to double space
Turn off your word processor's automatic hyphenation feature.
Print using high quality paper (e.g., not with dot matrix printer paper).
Print on only one side of a piece of paper.
Keep a backup file on the computer, or print an extra copy.

Many features of MLA style (notably the use of underlining instead of italic type to represent book titles) seem to be designed to make it easier to compose documents on a typewriter (numerous references to typewriters in the current edition of the style manual bear this out). It is debatable whether such methods are needed now that word processors are universal in academia.

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Citation

The works cited page should be headed "Works Cited," centered in normal font. Entries should be double-spaced, alphabetized, and use a hanging indent (beginnings of entries are not indented, but wrapped text is). Dates should be written with the day of the month first, the three letter abbreviation of the month and the year (example: 4 Jul. 1776).

A book: Author last name, first name. Book title. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

Conway, John Horton. On Numbers and Games. 2nd ed. Natick: A. K. Peters, 2001.

An encyclopedia or dictionary: Author of entry. "Title of entry." Title of reference book. Edition number. Year of publication.

Mohanty, Jitendra M. "Indian Philosophy." The New Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia. 15th ed. 1987.

(If the work is not particularly well-known, the writer is advised to add the publication details required in a normal book entry.)

A periodical (magazine or journal): Author last name, first name. "Article title." Title of periodical<u> Date of periodical (or, if a journal, volume number, followed by year in parentheses): Pages.

Brophy, Mike. "Driving Force." <u>The Hockey News 21 Mar. 2006: 16-19.

Kane, Robert. "Turing Machines and Mental Reports." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1966): 344-52.

A website: Author of webpage."Article Title." Title of webpage. Date of publication. Institution associated with. Date of retrieval <url>.

"Plagiarism." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Jul. 2004, 10:55 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation. 10 Aug. 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism>.

A CD-ROM: Author's last name, first name. "Article title of printed source or printed analogue." Periodical title of printed source or printed analogue Date: inclusive page. Title of database. CD-ROM. Name of vendor or computer service. Electonic Publication data or data for access.

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