MLA: Annotated Bibliography

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Your Name Professor Wall English 211 January 17, 2006 Title of Your Essay This document discusses and offers examples showing how to use the three parts of MLA: paper format, in-text citation, and the Works Cited page. (MLA stands for Modern Language Association, which is the governing body for all humanities-related work.) MLA paper format includes the heading, page numbering, spacing, margins, and format for quoting from texts. MLA in-text citation is the parenthetical information you offer to show where you got the quote or paraphrase you are using. MLA Works Cited page lists all the sources you used in your paper. The following paragraphs discuss MLA formatting and in-text citation. The final page of this document shows…show more content…
You indent the quote 10 spaces, or a 1” (two tabs), to set it apart from the rest of your text. No quotation marks are used because the indentation shows it is a direct quote. The quote is double-spaced like the rest of your paper and there are no extra spaces before or after the quote. It is left justified but not right justified. At the end of your long quote, include the in-text citation right after the end punctuation. Please note the different location of the period in long quotes (before the citation) as opposed to after the citation in regular in-text quotes. (Wall 2) If you are quoting lines from a poem, and you quote three lines or less, then you use the backslash/to show where the lines/ are broken (Wall lines 1-3). If you are quoting four or more lines from a poem you need to indent and show the line breaks. You indent 10 spaces and you break the lines where the…show more content…
It is not bolded, underlined, italicized, or put in all caps. The Works Cited page lists all the sources you have drawn from in your paper. For your journal papers and genre papers you will have only one source (the story or poem itself), but you still need a Works Cited page listing that one source. You will of course have a longer list for your Literary Research Essay. Works Cited entries begin at the left margin. The first line is not indented, but every subsequent line is indented ½ an inch or 5 spaces (one tab). Works Cited entries are listed alphabetically according to the author’s last name or the article title if there is no author. You need to consult A Writer’s Reference to see what types of information is needed for each type of source. For example, the information needed for an anthology (the Bedford text) is different than information needed for a book or web pages. Look up the item in the “MLA” chapter of A Writer’s Reference and you’ll see how to cite each type of source. Please post any citation questions you have on our Q&A page on

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