Citations and Works Cited Page
| Formatting Your Paper in MLA Style | |
| In-Text Citations, Signal Phrases, and Direct Quotations | |
| Paraphrasing Source Material | |
| You are here > | Citations and Works Cited Page |
Introduction
Sharing your sources with your audience is one of your responsibilities as an educated person. In fact, researchers in all subjects list their sources on the last page of their articles, reports, or any other document that includes source information. Sometimes this list is called a bibliography. In English class, the list is called the Works Cited page. The Works Cited page is an alphabetical list of all of the sources you cited in your paper, that is, all sources that your paper refers to either in an in-text citation or a signal phrase. (To review in-text citations and signal phrases, please go to MLA 2 in this module.) The Works Cited page includes information readers would need if they wanted to find the sources that you used.
Remember that an in-text citation includes the author’s last name, but not their first name or the name of their article. Some professional writers publish thousands of articles during their careers. How can your reader find the right one? By referring to your Works Cited page! There, your reader will find a citation for each source you have referred to in your paper. The citation includes information like the author, the name of the article, the name of the publication, the date it was published, and the URL (for online sources). This information is presented in a specific order. You will need to create or get citations for all of your sources.
Creating a Citation
For this course, you will need to format your citations according to MLA 9 style. If you are using sources from a library database, you can easily use the CITE tool to get a pre-made citation. If you need to create a citation, refer to these resources for how to create citations for different types of sources.
- MLA Citation Style Video from Arizona State University Library
- NOVA’s MLA 9 Citation Style Guide
- MLA Formatting and Style Guide from OWL Purdue
- Sample MLA Research Paper annotated (scroll to the last page to see what a Works Cited page looks like)
- Citation generating websites: Citation Machine, KnightCite, Cite This For Me (always verify your citation with a style guide like NOVA or OWL Purdue.
