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MLA Referencing - What is it? And how to use it

Background information on MLA Referencing

MLA referencing (Modern Language Association) - The MLA format is used for writing papers in the humanities, literature or arts including subjects like English, philosophy, languages and history. MLA uses parenthetical citation to reference sources within the text, noting the author’s last name and page number where the information used in the assignment can be found. When an author’s arguments or ideas are quoted or paraphrased, this must be indicated in the parentheses at the end of the sentence, with no comma between the author’s name and page number, for example;

Further Examples

Another use of source material is to attribute it to the author within the text of the essay. The author’s name should be incorporated into the quotation being used with the page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. Material can also be paraphrased and arguments summarised in the writers own words.

If there are two authors the names of both should be provided in the text and in the reference list. If there are more than two authors the name of the first author only should be given, followed by the abbreviation et al.

If two authors have the same surname, this must be indicated using the initial of their first name in brackets at the end of the sentence

If no author can be found, a word should be chosen from the title of the source and punctuated or underlined appropriately, for an article, for instance.

When using more than one work by the same author, the author’s name must be followed by a coma and followed by a word from the title of the source that is being referred to:

Longer quotations of more than one line should be preceded by a colon, indented from the main text, and cite author and page number without quotation marks.

An article that another author cites is defined as a ‘secondary source’. Every attempt should be made to ensure that the original source is cited in the normal way.

Electronic sources should follow the format, author page (in brackets) or title page (in brackets). If no page numbers are provided, paragraph number can be indicated instead. Commas must be included when using abbreviations in parenthetical citations.

Citations incorporated into the main text are listed alphabetically in a reference list at the end of the assignment. Books are cited by surname or author (or originator), first name, title of book (in italics), place of publication, name of publisher and year:

An editor is cited in the same way as an author. In the reference list editorship should be identified by using ed (for a single editor) or eds (for more than one editor). The corporate author can be used to replace the name of the author when the name of the author can not be identified:

For chapters in books the source should be written as surname, initial, title of chapter (in inverted commas), title of book (in italics), first name and surname of book author/s, place of publisher, publisher and date of publication:

For journal articles, the source should be written as surname, first name, title of article (in inverted commas), journal title (in italics), volume number, part number, date (in brackets), and page number:

Online journal articles should be written in the same way with the words ‘online’ and ‘internet’ added, followed by the day, date and year, the word ‘available’ and the internet address.

For newspapers the source should be written by journalist surname, first name, title of news item (in inverted commas), name of newspaper (in italics), date, page number. If the city of publication is not included in the title of the paper it should be added in square brackets after the title of the newspaper:

If an author for a news article is not attributed the entry should begin with the title of the article:

Internet sources should be written as author/editor, initials, title (in inverted commas), date of publication, full address of site and date of access (in brackets):

CD-Rom information should be written as author/editor, first name, title (in inverted commas), date of print, title of full text database (in italics), write the word ‘CD-ROM’, vendor name and date of publication:

An Encyclopaedia entry would be written as follows;

For video recording and films the reference would be written as follows;

For sound recordings the name of the band would come first, followed by the name of the album (underlined), the name of the record label and date:

For a specific song, the order would be name of artist or band, followed by the name of the song, the album title (underlined), record label and date:

For interview citations there are three main types including personal interviews, published interviews and television or radio interviews. A personal interview should be written as surname and first name of the person being interviewed, then write ‘personal interview’ followed by the date.

Published interviews should write the name of the person being interviewed followed by the word ‘interview’, the name of the publication in which the interview appeared, the title of the interview (if it has one), followed by the date:

For television or radio interviews, the source should be written as the surname and first name of the person being interviewed, followed by the word ‘interview’, the title of the programme (underlined or italicised), identifying information about the broadcast, followed by place of interview and date:

To summarise, the MLA referencing system uses only the author and page number in the main body of the text. If an electronic source is being cited, the paragraph is cited instead. If the author cannot be located at all, one word from the title should be included to indicate the source in the main body of the text. Generally, references are listed by author, title, place of publication, name of publisher and date. The main difference between the MLA style and the Harvard or APA style is that the MLA places the date at the end of each source instead of after the author name in the reference list; additionally MLA does not include the date of the source in the main body of the text whereas Harvard and APA does.

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