MLA Citation - Research Papers

In English and other Humanities subjects, you are often called upon to write papers. These papers that are written, unless you are a literally published expert on the subject, are going to have quotes either directly copied or summarized. Guess what? If you don't tell your professor, in writing, in the proper format where you found that work, you are plagiarizing. Plagiarism is typically defined as "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work" ("Plagiarism").  Plagiarism is often punishable at the High School or College/University level by an automatic failing of the assignment, the class, or in some cases expulsion from the learning institution in general.  So you may as well learn how to cite your sources!

There are two types of citation in an "MLA" document. There is the in-text citation which gives the reader a clue that the words they have just read were not the writer's own, and the "Works Cited" portion of the document that appears at the end of the paper, and begins on a new page. Imagine if you will, that I was writing a paper on Pandas (Hi PamdaMan!), and I wanted to quote Bob Roberts, the "famous" writer who has written a book on Pandas.. Well, here would be a sample from my paper, as well as how the works cited reference would appear. This is all fictional, but it should give you an idea of how the system works.

...I think Pandas are pretty cool because they eat shoots and leaves (there is a joke there). Bob Roberts, the author of "The Pandas Natural Habitat" agrees with me by suggesting that "Pandas like leaves and grass, fruits and berries, but they also eat bamboo shoots to make their teeth stronger" (137). ...

WAIT A SECOND... I thought you said earlier that typically you need to have the author's name included in an in-text citation!!! You plagiarising meanie! Well, typically this is the case, we would need to use (Roberts 137) if I had not introduced him in the sentence. This is only acceptable the first time an author is introduced in a paper, so be careful.

WRONG!!!

There are enough resources for teachers out there these days that they will catch you. There are millions (perhaps literally) of books with searchable texts online available for teachers.  There are websites like turnitin.com that database every paper ever turned into to the system, and tons of online/print sources.  They have "Over 11 billion Web Pages Crawled & Archived... Over 90 Million Student Papers... Over 12,000 Major Newspapers, Magazines & Scholarly Journals...  Thousands of Books Including Literary Classics... ("turnitin") and more.  They will catch you, and you will fail the paper, fail the class, and possibly get kicked out of school.  Don't think that writing a paper in a different language will keep you safe, either.  They have Spanish, French and German covered.

Diana Hacker's Website: She's dead now, but her publishing company is still keeping handy MLA guides published that are updated regularly via her website.

A sample works cited page: This is from Diana Hacker's Website, but I figured it would be worth pointing out individually.

MLA.org: This is the organization that made all this stuff up! MLA is the acronym for the Modern Language Association.

Turnitin.com: This is an anti-plagiarism website for teachers who are suspicious of a student's work. Some teachers often require their students to submit their papers electronically to this service before turning it in to the teacher.

The OWL at Purdue: This is a Online Writing Lab that will give you lots of resources for assisting with your writing!

Ask.com. Dictionary.com. Plagiarism. 8 August 2009. http://www.dictionary.com.

Roberts, Bob. The Panda's Natural Habitat. Chicago: Really Cool Books, 2009.¹

¹This book doesn't actually exist. It is just an example.