This video is about understanding MLA style and I mean the 8th edition, that's the 2016 new one. To talk us through, I want to talk about some of the logic of MLA style and then get into some of the details of the little things that have changed. Now when I talk about the logic, I mean big picture stuff that hasn't changed. Like you wrote some work, you sent it to an audience and that audience was like, hey, I want to know about the books that you cited or the journal articles or the websites that you went to. In other words, they're reading your work and they see this citation pop up and they're like, man, I want to learn more.
I'm going to go to the B section of your Works Cited page. Oh, there it is. I can learn more. Actually go to the website and learn more.
Now, that hasn't changed. That's the same logic as ever. So when I say I want to talk about the logic here, I really mean the logic of documentation on the list of Works Cited, like how they're put together. Okay, so the thing that is new here is that MLA has this list of nine things that you might have or might not have for a lot of the things you want to cite, whether it's a book or a journal article or a chair in a museum or a TV show you watch, whatever it is. that you're citing, you're going to have some of these things.
And they say, hey, put things in that order with this punctuation and everything will be fine. Now notice that only 1, 2, and 9 have periods. And it's really subtle.
Do you see them kind of turning yellow? So they're saying that after 1, 2, and 9, after you list the author, bam, you put a period. Then you list the title of the source and then bam, you put a period.
And then all that other stuff you kind of list it and you do a comma after it, a comma, comma, comma, until you get to the very last thing and you put a final period. Bam. It's that simple. So, in practice, let's say I want to cite a book that I read recently. When I start filling things in with the right punctuation, right?
I put the author, period, bam, the title, bam. And then I have number 7 as a comma, and then I always put a period after my last thing, even if it's number 8, not number 9. Does that make sense? I list them out in the order they say, and then I type it out on my works cited page exactly like that, with that exact same punctuation. You see, in this case, I only have one comma because I only have one thing in between.
all the others. Okay, let's look at another example. What about that website I mentioned earlier?
There's this article on a website. In this case, I have the author, of course. I have the title of source, of course, periods after both. In this case, I have a container.
Now, container is kind of a complicated word. I'll talk about a little bit more later, but the simplest way to think of it is the container is where you get the smaller thing. So we all know that web articles come on websites that have other titles.
We all know that we watch TV shows. that the episode itself has a title, but it's part of a larger show. That larger show is the container. You might have a book that has a lot of chapters in it.
And if you cite just one chapter, that's the title, number two, but it's in a larger container, the title of the book, number three. Okay, we'll talk a little bit more about that as it goes. But for right now, you notice that I put a comma after number three, because you always put commas after number three.
It came out on this date, comma, in this location, period. So I put it all in that order with that punctuation, and I get my list over excited. Not that hard. Well, What about one more thing?
I was reading this academic article the other day to this journal that I subscribe to, the print version. And we see the title of the article is number two, and it's in the larger container, which is the title of the journal itself. Now this time I have number six, a number. I didn't have that in the other ones. Great.
So I'll slap that in in the way I'm supposed to. Of course, I'm not covering every little detail of how you write it out these days. You can look that up yourself. This is just big picture.
Now notice number nine location is the page number. In my last one, if I kind of back up for a second, you saw my location. was a website. So the idea is, hey, you might get this stuff in the location of a website, or you might find that article in the location of a page. Those are parallel entries here.
The main thing, of course, right now is the punctuation. I put it in order. You see my periods go exactly where they should be. Then I have comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, before the final period.
Okay. Logically, this makes a lot of sense for most things, but I know what you're thinking. You're like, wait, you read that journal article in print. You didn't find it on...
a website where everyone else finds it or you're like you read that book that is so um 1998 what i do is i read it on the kindle reader perhaps on my computer or book or you know there's like electronic stuff or we haven't talked much about tv shows but what if i like pull out my lost dvds because it's the best tv show of all time and you're like ha ha ha you watch the dvds because i go to netflix well mla is flexible enough especially these days to take that into account you It just takes a little bit of getting to know. Quick warning, you have to remember that there is often more than one correct way to document a source. And you're like, well, you could say that. No, it's not just me. The MLA handbook itself says that.
That's real emphasis of edition eight is that things change and things can be flexible. So, I mean, it's right there in the book. That's how I would cite it.
So keep that in mind as we go forward. Okay, so we've got our list of nine things, right? Well, if we're doing some of this complicated digital stuff, We have to think of it this way. You have the same stuff as before, author, title, source, period, ban, period, ban. And then we have that first container, which has comma, comma, comma, it ends with a period.
And then what if that- A container is like inside another container. Well, that's what we're going to walk through. Now, notice really quickly the punctuation again. There's only four periods here, max.
The period in the middle, after number nine location of the first container, is essentially saying, hey, we're done with the first container here. Now let's move into where you found or where you accessed that. Okay, in practice, it's not as complicated as it sounds.
Remember that book I was talking about earlier? I have the author, title of source. I'm just...
putting it over there because I don't have room. Same content as before. There's the publisher, there's the publication date, period, bam. Well, what if I was looking at it in the Kindle Cloud Reader? Well, that's my second container.
That's the place I accessed that book. The location was at that location there. So in my actual citation, it's as simple as that. I have the exact same citation as before. That's that first line.
And then I end it with a period, same as before, but I add on the content for my second container, ending that with a period. Again, like I said, four periods max here, right? Bam, bam, bam, bam.
Let's do another one. What about that academic journal article? There's my author.
There's my title. I have the exact same stuff as before. But now, what if I got that on a website? The article is in the container of the journal, and that journal is in the container of this website called Conference on College Composition.
I know it's a lot of words, but it's true in this case. I got that in this place. Do you see a theme here that my second container In most practical cases, not always, but often, we'll only have a title and a location because it's a digital thing.
So I get this massive-looking works cited entry, but the first part is exactly the same, and that second part in red is the only new part here. Okay, what about when I'm watching Lost, the best TV show ever, and I want to cite something from Season 5, Episode 1, which is called Because You Left. Quick super aside here is that when I'm citing TV shows, there really are a lot of ways to cite it.
based on what I want to emphasize. If I was talking about the director of this episode, I could put director under other contributors, number four. Or I could say, if I'm emphasizing Matthew Fox's stellar performance, I could put that.
Or I could say, co-created by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber, I could put that under other contributors. Even that number nine, where I put disc one, that's kind of an option here as well.
It's me saying, hey, I want to emphasize in my essay something about the discs here. I really could leave that off and end it at 2009. This is a standard okay enough citation because things are inside other things, you know, right? Like the episode is in the show.
Okay, so I can end up with this kind of an entry. You see the period after the title source and comma, comma, comma, period. So what if I got it inside Netflix and I'm freaking out because I'm like, hey, there's this thing and it's inside another thing.
Okay, so all I have to do is do the almost the exact same citation. But you notice in this case, I don't have disc one. I end it after the 2009. And then I put my second container. It's called Netflix, and the second container is located at this web address.
It's actually not that hard. Okay, so if we talk about the logic, I also want to talk about some of the specific details, especially if you've been citing it in Mellie a long time and you want to know what specifically is different. This isn't everything, just the things that, to me as a teacher, jumped out.
Well, one, there's that string of commas that, you know, comma, comma, comma, comma is new to me. And actually, I think that's a good thing. If you compare that to the old version of this exact same citation, there's always like a period there and put a... parentheses there, but then use a colon and then put a, I think it was more confusing.
Now it's like, come on, just put a bunch of commas. Another thing, if I compare to the new to the old of this one is that I used to have to always put at the end print or web or DVD or, you know, museum piece or email or whatever kind of thing. Now they're assuming, you know what, that's probably clear.
They're saying like, if you have that page number there, that's good enough. It's not really necessary to say the word print. You leave it off.
It's kind of cool. Another subtle difference you'll see in this one is that I write volume and issue different. Again, I think if you're a student, this is a good thing. There used to be that 66.3 if you look at the old one.
And I think a lot of people are like, what does that even mean? 66 is what? And 3 is what?
I don't even know what volume and issue means. Now you actually write it out to make it a little clearer. Similarly, you write page numbers a little different.
You look at the old one there and it says 402 to 26. And it's like, is that volume 402 to issue 20? What does that even mean? So now you put pp for multiple pages or just p for one page to make it really clear. Hey guys, we're talking about page numbers. It's a clarity thing.
Another thing you'll notice is that URLs are back. They used to be in MLA and then they got rid of them and now they're back. This is the one thing that I'm a little iffy about. I don't know if you totally need it.
This is what it looks like now. If you look at the old one, you left it off. The idea was that if people can Google this, they can probably find it. I think part of this is that a lot of people are publishing things in digital spaces these days, right?
So if I turn my essay in digitally, someone might actually want to just click it and go straight to it. They might not want to have to Google it. My guess is that's what they're doing.
You also notice that in the old one, you had to put the date that you access. Hey, I got to this on June 2nd, 2016. You don't have to do that anymore. I think it means that in practice, you don't have to keep quite as much track of exactly when you got something. I think a lot of people just made that date up anyway. Come on, seriously.
The thing I'm most glad about is you used to have to put the sponsor of a site. So this article from a website called The Toast is owned by a company called The Toast. In this case, it happens to be the same. It's not always, of course. Sometimes a website, it is useful to say this is who owns that just so you know.
But often, I mean, the classic case is The New York Times. People are always citing, oh, this is from the website called The New York Times, and it's owned by a company called The New York Times. You don't have to do that anymore.
Okay, so of those seven things I just showed you, three of these are actually rules. Those are things that no matter what you're going to do. But some of these are actually options.
There actually is a place in the book where they remind you that, hey, you might want to include some of this stuff. In other words, maybe the sponsor of your site is crucial to what you're talking about. You want to draw attention to it.
Maybe the medium of what you're talking about is really important and you don't want people to get confused. So you always have to be thinking. of real people.
What might they need if they're actually looking up your stuff? What might they want to know or not know? It's not just about, oh, I will follow the rules because that's what I have to do. You're actually thinking of a real audience. I actually kind of like that.
Big picture here, it means that MLA style is flexible, which is another way of saying that it varies by context, which I think is cool.