MLA FORMATTING AND CITATION

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR MLA 8 AND THE TOOLS TO HELP YOU

GENERAL FORMATTING

• 1 inch margins• Times New Roman, size 12 font • Header: Last Name and page number• Heading (on first page only)

• Name• Teacher• Class • Date

IN-TEXT CITATIONS

• This is the way to give credit to your sources in your paper without disrupting the flow of your paper.

• There are different citations to use for each type of source you have. Usually it is the author’s last name in parentheses.

• The period always goes outside of the citation.

EXAMPLE FOR BOOKS

• However none of these things indicates that Lady Macbeth participates in the “renunciation of her own desire” and “unquestioningly seeks to confirm her husband’s ambition” (Alfar 190).

• (Author’s last name #)

EXAMPLE FOR BOOKS

• Michael Dobson explains the dangers of the Lady Macbeth stereotype that the whole of Macbeth can be boiled down to the point where Lady Macbeth is a “power-hungry monster of a wife [who] succeeds in nagging her husband into killing the rightful king” (7).

• The author’s name is used in the sentence so the citation is just the page number.

FOR MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS, ETC.

• If there is an author, use their last name in parentheses.

• If there is no author, use the title of the article with the quotation marks.

• (“Finding Things”)

FOR WEBSITES

• Give the author’s last name if you have one. • If you don’t have an author, give the title of the article.

• (“Chili Cook-off Secrets”).

TOOL #1 – THE PURDUE ONLINE WRITING LAB• https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/11/

• This source has sample papers as well as guidelines for all types of citations, both works cited and in-text.

TOOL #2 – EASYBIB

• http://www.easybib.com/

• This is a citation creation machine that will help you properly format your sources.

DON’T PLAGIARIZE.