by Mary Byrd

Created on: May 13, 2008

"Modern Language Association (MLA) is a documentation style that offers a convenient system for acknowledging and directing readers to your sources for idea," (Anson, p. 121). It is the style most had drilled into our heads in high school. MLA is used in most non-scientific essays, term papers, and magazine article. You use it after quotes, and paraphrasing or summarizing a source.

To document in-text using MLA style you use mostly parenthetical citations. It is simple enough type the author's last name comma space letter "p" followed by a period and then the page number, in a set of parentheses but no period until after the closing parentheses (Anson, p. 122). If you are using the same documentation in the same paragraph then you only type in the page number enclosed in parentheses (123).

Another way you can cite a source according to Anson, Schwegler, and Muth, in, "The Longman Writer's Bible" is to cite your source before your discussion followed by the page number in parentheses (122). You can name up to 3 authors in your citation but if there are more than 3 then list the first author's last name followed by et al (Anson, et al. p. 124).

Some people prefer to use footnotes, but I find citing the documentation at the end of the paper easier and less distracting from the article. The only reason I would add a footnote would be to include an interesting bit of information that does not belong in the text of the piece.

For the General Reference page, write the documentation in this order, author, title underlined (unfortunately plain text does not support underlining and italics when transposed, so I cannot demonstrate it exactly for the reader in this article) and last the publication information. When citing your documentation, indent the second line. The citation should also be doubled spaced with a double, double space between documentations.

Anson, Chris M., Schwegler, Robert A., and Muth, Marcia F. The Longman Writer's Bible, the complete guide to writing, research, and grammar. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.

The material for this article is mostly paraphrased from the above documentation. You may check with different websites for more in detail information, and of course other style type books. Check out the MLA website or most universities' English department as other reliable resources for documenting citations.

Just remember to always cite your source and never try to pass the information as coming from your own sweet little brain.

One last thing, you will find your documentation is much easier to do if you keep good notes and document as you write your article.

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