MLA Style for Bibliographies and Citations A Brief Introduction.

Primary Rule Include the least amount of information that will allow your readers to find the precise work you used.

Books  Last, First. Title. City: Publisher, Year.  Examples: Allende, Isabel. Retrato en Sepia. Barcelona: Plaza Janés, Portrait in Sepia. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.

Essays in Books  Last, First. “Essay Title.” Book Title. Ed. First Last. City: Publisher, Year. Pages.  Example: Navarro Tejero, Antonia and Manuel Cabello Pino. “Magic Realism in Arundhati Roy and Isabel Allende: The Experience of Dislocation.” Figures of Belatedness: Postmodernist Fiction in English. Ed. Javie Gascueña Gahete and Paula Martín Salván. Córdoba, Spain: Universidad de Córdoba,

Articles  Last, First. “Article Title.” Journal Title volume.issue (year): pages.  Note: Do not include the issue number if the journal is paginated continuously. Include it if you’re not sure.  Example: Lagos, María Inés. “Female Voices from the Borderlands: Isabel Allende’s Paula and Retrato en Sepia.” Latin American Literary Review (2002):

Online-Only or HTML Full Text Articles  Last, First. "Article Title." Journal Title volume.issue (year): pages if paginated. date..  Example: Foley, Barbara. "'Lepers in the Acropolis': Liberalism, Capitalism, and the Crisis in Academic Labor." Contemporary Literature 39 (1998): ProQuest. 20 April

Adding Annotations  After the last element of the bibliographic entry, write a short paragraph describing the work and its relevance to your research.

Formatting the Bibliography  Titled “Works Cited.” (title centered)  Hanging indents  Double spaced, just like the body of the paper.  Alphabetical by author’s last name. If there is no author, use the title instead.  Capitalize all major words in titles.

Primary Rule The rule of least information, plus the rule of least confusion and greatest readability.

Citing Quotations, Paraphrases, and Ideas  (last name, page number; last name, page number).  Include a shortened title if last name alone is not enough to uniquely identify the work.  Place at the end of a sentence, before the period, unless that’s confusing.  Example: (Allende “Portrait,” 278)

Questions? Either about MLA style or about your research.