Mla

ince the material in your research paper comes largely from the work of others, you will need to give proper credit by citing your sources. Traditionally, such citations took the form of notes numbered consecutively throughout the paper and placed either at the bottoms of the appropriate pages (footnotes) or together at the end of the paper (endnotes). Beginning in 1984, however, the practice recommended by the Modern Language Association is to place citations of sources directly in the text, in parentheses. Numbers in the text refer to supplementary or explanatory comments that provide supplementary information that is not directly related to the thesis but might be of interest to the reader and are presented in endnotes or footnotes. Parenthetical citations refer the reader to a list of works cited at the end of the paper. The basic elements of the citation are the authorÐ"­s last name, a shortened but easily understood form of the title (with, if necessary, the volume number), and the page number of the material used from the source. However, only enough information to guide the reader to the appropriate source is necessary. In other words, the authorÐ"­s name and the title of the source can be omitted from the parenthetical citation if they are clearly identified outside the parentheses nearby in the text of the paper. Further, if only one work by a given author is listed in Ð"¬Works CitedÐ"®, (bibliography) the workÐ"­s title can be omitted from the parenthetical citation. As you study the following examples, observe that common sense rather than hard and fast rules determines the information that must be included in a parenthetical citation.

MLA