The purpose of a works cited page is for readers to be able to find your sources should they want to explore further.

• Why is that important?

  • First off, doing so shows that you are an honest scholar, one who practices academic honesty by letting readers know that you didn't in essence steal ideas or information from others and present them as though you came up with them.

  • It also gives credit where credit is due, letting readers know who did the research or gathered the information originally. In essence honoring the hard work of others.

  • Most important, though, is that showing readers your sources builds your credibility. It shows that you took the time to research the issue, that you've listened to the conversation going on in our society concerning the topic, and that you are well-versed in the different viewpoints of the subject you are writing about.

• By the way, get into the habit of looking at works cited pages that authors present in more scholarly books and journals--an excellent way to find sources for your essays.

Also, note that MLA citation style has changed in some significant ways starting this year, after the publication of the seventh edition of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. If your copy of PSM has "2009 MLA Update" in a orange-red circle on the cover of the book, you have the most up to date instructions for MLA. If it doesn't, you don't.

Section 1: Overall format:

Below is an simulation of works cited page:

Notice that

• it's all double spaced,

• the entries are alphabetically arranged,

• each paragraph starts at the margin and then is indented one half inch with any subsequent lines (also known as a hanging indent--which your word processor should be set to do for you automatically),

• it has a centered title at the one inch margin, and

• it has the last name and page number in the right hand corner, one half inch from the top.

Section 2: Citing a book:

• Notice that the city of publication is used, not the state.

• Also, notice that you don't give the full name of the publisher, only the first significant word of the company's name (as long as it isn't the first name of an individual).

• And if it is a university press, give the whole name, but use U in place of University and P in place of Press. So University of California Press becomes U of California P.

• Also, the date is the date of copyright. Use the latest copyright date noted in the book, but ignore print dates, which mean that more copies of the book were produced.

• Finally notice at the end of the citation, include the word Print. Starting this year, MLA requires the type of source to be noted with each citation.

• By the way, the title is in italics. Rule of thumb: titles of works that stand alone--books, magazines, TV shows, movies, CDs or albums--are presented in italics. Works that are part of a larger work--magazine articles, book chapter titles, episode titles of a TV show, song titles--are presented with quotation marks.

Section 3: Citing a magazine:

• Notice that the month is abbreviated. The only exceptions are May, June and July.

• Also, the pages show the full spread of the article, and you don't use page before the numbers.

• If the article jumps around--starts on page 19, goes to 23, then to 65 and so on--use only 19+.

Section 4: Citing an article without an author:

• All you do is skip the author and move to the next piece of information, the article title.

• And alphabetize based on the first word of that title, as long as it is not A, An, or The.

  • If it does start with one of these articles, just alphabetize based on the next word.

Section 5: Citing one article in The Composition of Everyday Life or any anthology:

• This is how you do any of the articles in CEL, starting with the author of the article, not the editors of the book. Watch out, though--note the edition we're using. Most anthologies won't include the word concise.
• And why is Star Trek in italics? As noted above, TV shows are italicized.

Section 6: Citing two or more articles in an anthology:

• When you use more than one article from the same anthology of various authors, like CEL, then you don't keep repeating the book information each time.  Instead, you cite the book, starting with the editor, as noted above. Then you do the following with the article citations:

• And obviously, these citations are found alphabetically in the works cited, not directly under the anthology citation.  See the whole works cited example above to see how it looks.

Section 7: Citing World Wide Web articles:

We will be following the basic format for Web sources found in PSM, the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed., and Frequently Asked Questions about MLA Style.

• Notice that the beginning of the citation (highlighted in yellow) is like the print version of a magazine noted in section 3 above--name, article title, periodical title, date. If there is no date for the source (and you should be suspicious if there isn't), put n.d. (meaning no date).

  • This shows you the primary principle of citing magazine, newspaper, or journal articles that have print versions--follow the same format until you get to page numbers and online information.

• The second part of the citation, highlighted in blue, is where we begin to see the change from a print version.

  • First off, notice no mention of page numbers.

  • Instead, give the number of paragraphs, so that readers can see the full extent of the article, just as you would with page numbers in a paper article.

  • Also, click here to recall how to cite these in your text.

• The third part, highlighted in violet, is information that you need for all online sources.

  • Access date: the second date notes when you accessed the web page, which always precedes the URL with a space, only, in between.
    • Make sure to give the day, month and year, in that order.
    • Web pages can change frequently (as this one may--check the date), so it may be important when you downloaded it.

      • Also--one of the benefits of Diigo is that it can save a copy of the article, so if a magazine or newspaper pulls the article, you'll still have a copy of it.

  • URL: Starting this year, MLA does not require you to use a URL with web pages, unless your instructor requires it. I don't. However, only if it's easy to find by searching the author's name and title of the web page in Google. Make sure and test it to make sure. If it is difficult to find through a search, then give the URL with angled brackets < >. See the next section.

Section 8: Citing other World Wide Web pages:

I'm sure you've noticed that there are many other resources on the Web that are not journal or magazine articles.  Some are very useful, some are not.  You need to evaluate carefully any pages you get off of the Internet, since anyone can put up anything.  See PSM ch. 27  and a web site by Purdue about evaluating web pages under the reading for week 11.

Here's an example of a Web page citation.

Now, with this web page, I include the URL because if you search for it in Google, you'll come up with a different page with the URL: http://www.digitalcenter.org/webreport94/ib.htm.

The basic order of information is as follows:

• Author (if noted)
• "Page Title"
• Project Title
• date
• number of paragraphs
• Organization/institution titles
• source type
• access date
• URL

Note about URL usage: give the full URL of the article/page (not just the home page of a report or web site) so that readers can look it up.

• Notice, the period follows > angled bracket so that it doesn't get mixed in with the URL.

• Note also that you can split up the URL to drop to the next line, but do so only at a / or a period. And click on Shift-Enter to keep the URL in the same paragraph as the rest of the citation.

  • (If your word processor automatically makes hyperlinks--you can tell if it underlines your URL automatically--turn off the function. In Word, you click on Tools>AutoCorrect,>AutoFormat As You Type>Internet and Network Paths As you Type (remove the check mark).)

Now, here's the tricky thing about some web pages. If you go directly to this site, you will find that the only information available is the title of the page "Historical Background," the URL and how many paragraphs, based on your counting.

And this:

Pretty cryptic, huh?

What you have to do is find the home page, or the index for the site so that you can determine who is presenting the page you're interested in. In most cases, a well designed web page will have some link to a home page or some index page.

I bet you've already guessed that the middle icon is the home page; clicking on it sends you to the table of contents for the study of the report where we learn the title and the date.

However, we still have nothing that identifies the organization. We do know the report is stored on a server owned by some organization called Digital Center. But that's not enough.

Another trick is to back up on the URL, deleting the part of the address from right to left, until you get to a / mark.   If we do so until we reach org/--so that the URL showing is http://www.digitalcenter.org/--then we'll find the organization that conducted the study. (Which by the way has changed--it used to be UCLA Center for Communication Policy but has since moved to USC--confusing, isn't it?)

So use first a home page or index link if available, then try backing up on the URL if you don't get all the information that you need.

One other point: notice that there is no author mentioned. Again, if you find a source without an author, start with the next piece of information, and alphabetize based on it (though for alphabetizing purposes, ignore the articles a, an and the).   Pretty common sense, huh? And I'm not being ironic. Really.

Section 9: Library online databases:

• As you know, the LCC library databases are online. In the last couple years, they've become much easier to access from off campus, using the same Technology User Identification (TUID) and password that you use to log into Star Port.

• Many of the citations found in these databases give only enough for you to find the paper version of the article.

• And many others give you an abstract, or a brief summary, of the article.

• By the way, don't use these abstracts in your paper. The actual article is more reliable, detailed and credible.

• However, there are a good number of full text articles in the databases.

• Here is how to cite them:

• Notice that you begin like a regular magazine article.

• However, after the publication date, things change.

• First, again note the number of paragraphs the article covers.

• Then, present the database with italics.

• If you're not sure what the database is called, just go to the library web site. At Find Articles>Research Databases: the name under Title is what you use.

• Finally, type of source (Web) and date of access.

Now really the last point: there is no reason for you to feel compelled to memorize this stuff. 

Always have in front of you your handbook and this web site as you put together works cited pages.

• Which you will need to do for essays 3 and 4--and for all essays that end up in the portfolio that use sources.

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[Introduction] [Parenthetic Citation] [Works Cited]

Created by Dan Holt: 11/3/1997
Last Revised: 03 Nov 2009 09:06 PM -0500

© 2009 by Dani7l T. Holt

Instructor note: feel free to use in your classes. However, if you copy anything from this page and paste into your materials, please practice what you preach and cite appropriately.