MLA Style is commonly used in Composition courses as well as some Humanities classes.
You can work with the MLA Style Guide (pictured on the bottom left), or with the resources provided in this guide.
You'll find basic examples of citing books, articles, web resources, and creating in-text citations. Additional online resources are also included.
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| If you cannot get access to the MLA Style Guide, you can refer to Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL). Their MLA Formatting and Style Guide includes examples and instructions for citing the most common types of sources. |
Green-- author (Last name, First)
Yellow--Title (italicized)
Blue -- Publisher
Red -- Date
Green-- author (Last name, first Middle Initial)
Yellow--Article Title (in quotation marks)
Blue -- Journal Title, including volume and issue numbers (italicized)
Red -- Year
Purple -- page numbers
Brown -- Database
Magenta -- URL
Green-- author (Last name, first)
Yellow--Article Title (in quotation marks)
Blue -- Website Title
Red -- Year
Magenta -- URL
APA style was created by the American Psychological Association for use by professionals and students preparing papers in psychology, nursing, social work, communications, education, business, and engineering among others.
Why use APA style? So that those in the discipline listed above have consistency in their exploration of information in their fields of study being able to scan quickly for key points and sources. Understanding APA Style will also help students further explore information and resources in their research.
Papers written in APA style should be double spaced. The page with the citations should start a new page and be labeled "References", any citations longer than one line should be double spaced, and for any citations longer than one line, use hanging indents on the second and all subsequent lines of the citation. If appendices are includes they will follow the References pages.
The citations in this guide are general citations from the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association shown below. For more information and more details on the formatting, writing, and citing of papers see the links below. And remember you can always ask a librarian!
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by 
Basic book citation example:
Burgess, R. (2019). Rethinking global health: Frameworks of power. Routledge.
This example shows first author name, last name followed by first initial, in parenthesis the year of publication, title in italics ending with publisher name. (Citation found on page 321 of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association seventh edition.)
In-text citation examples:
Parenthetical citation: (Burgess, 2019)
Narrative citation: Burgess (2019)
For further examples of different types of textual works see the resources below.
Basic article citation example:
Anderson, M. (2018). Getting consistent with consequences. Educational Leadership, 76(1), 26-33.
This example shows first the author, last name followed by the first initial, then the year of publication in parenthesis, followed by article title, then the journal title in italics next is volume number in italics followed by issue number in parenthesis, and last is the page rage of the article. (Citation found on page 317 of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association seventh edition.)
In-text citation examples:
Parenthetical citation: (Anderson, 2018)
Narrative citation: Anderson (2018)
For further examples and examples of different types of articles follow the links below.
Basic webpage on a website citation example:
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, January 23). People at high risk of developing flu-related complications. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/high_risk.htm
This example starts with the author in this case the group that authored the piece the Center for Disease Control. Nest in parenthesis is the date the webpage was published, followed by the title in italics. Last comes the webpage URL. (Please note that as this citation is longer than one line the second line should have a hanging indent)(Citation found on page 351 of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association seventh edition.)
In-text citation examples:
Parenthetical citation: (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018)
Narrative citation: Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2018)
For other types of electronic and webpage, citations see the links and resources below.
For all other types of sources including reports and gray literature, Conference presentations and proceedings, dissertations and theses, and more, including intext citations see the resources and links below.
For legal citations guidance beyond the APA Publication Manual visit the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School at https://www.law.cornell.edu/ and https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/
In short: Mendeley is a tool that enables you to manage citations and PDFs using a desktop client or through your account on mendeley.com. Mendeley also includes plugins for Word or OpenOffice, so you can easily create citations and/or bibliographies as you write your papers.
About Mendeley:
Installing Mendeley:
After Installing:
For Maximum Impact:
Want to learn more about Mendeley and how to use it for your research?
Let’s talk! We can set up an in-person or remote appointment to help you use this tool.
>> PS: We do not guarantee citations (in-text or bibliography entries) will be perfect. >> You definitely still want to proofread and verify that all the necessary citation information is included for the style (e.g., APA, MLA) and type of item you're citing. :-)
In short: Zotero is a research tool that helps users collect and organize sources. It’s a free, open-source program that can be downloaded as a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari and as a standalone program that works with Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. It’s also desktop application that lives in your browser. For many major databases and websites, the program can tell when a list of books or articles is displayed by showing an icon in the address bar, so citation information can be saved with just a few clicks.
About Zotero:
Installing Zotero:
After Installing:
For Maximum Impact:
Want to learn more about Zotero and how to use it for your research?
Let’s talk! We can set up an in-person or remote appointment to help you use this tool.
>> PS: We do not guarantee citations (in-text or bibliography entries) will be perfect. >> You definitely still want to proofread and verify that all the necessary citation information is included for the style (e.g., APA, MLA) and type of item you're citing. :-)
Citation Help via Google Scholar
In short: Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
About Google Scholar:
Getting Set-up for Success with Google Scholar:
at the top of the page to access Google Scholar Settings in your browser
Interpreting Your Google Scholar Search Results:
But Beware – Nothing is Perfect! We do not guarantee citations (in-text or bibliography entries) will be perfect. >> You definitely still want to proofread and verify that all the necessary citation information is included for the style (e.g., APA, MLA) and type of item you're citing. :-)