Understanding MLA Format for Citing Sources

Hello everyone! This is a video introducing the basics of MLA. We've already touched on and talked about how to visually set up MLA format. This video is about integrating sources and citing them within your essay. So first of all, just what is a source? A source is basically any information that you have taken from somewhere else, so somewhere other than you. It may be something someone else said. It may be something that you found in a book or in an article or an interview, television show, news channel, again, anywhere that's not from your own brain. It doesn't matter if it's spoken or written, so something really important to remember that when we're talking about sources in college, a source can be something that you heard from someone just as easily as it can be something that was written and published. Rephrasing information, so in other words, putting it into your own words, right? So taking a quote, you rephrase it, you make it sound like you. That's still considered source material, and you have to give credit to wherever it came from. Also, just always kind of keep in your head that the way to avoid plagiarism in college is to make sure that you're crediting your sources correctly, which is basically what MLA is all about. That's it. how you avoid plagiarism in your writing. In order to avoid plagiarism, it's important to know the different ways that you can incorporate source material into your writing. And there's three basic ways to format source material. You can use a quote, and a quote is where you're taking the wording directly from someone's mouth, directly from the page, exactly as it is. And you put it in quotation marks. That signals to someone that it is, in fact, a quote. A paraphrase is where you take something that was written or someone said, maybe it's a sentence, and you put it into your own words. That's a paraphrase. Paraphrases are roughly the same length as the original, so if you paraphrase something that's one sentence long, your paraphrase is going to be also about one sentence long. Summary and paraphrase, very, very similar. Okay, so they both actually require that you rephrase whatever the source material was or is. When it comes to summarizing, however, the big difference is that in a summary, you're actually condensing the information. So instead of, say, paraphrasing one sentence, maybe you actually want to summarize an entire article, and you want to summarize it into a really short paragraph. so that you can include that article's main point within your essay. Well, when you're summarizing, you're condensing the information. So you're giving the five-minute version of something. It isn't the, you know, same length, nothing like that. It is going to be a shorter version. And that is summarize. When you summarize or paraphrase, it is going to require the same sorts of citation that a quote does. only difference is that a quote you put quotation marks around it and a paraphrase and summary you do not. Okay so it doesn't matter which of these ways you choose they all have to be integrated they all need to be cited. Now as far as integrating sources what that means is that when you put a quote a paraphrase summary into your essay you need to introduce the source material and make it clear that it's not your own ideas or information. So that typically involves author's full name and title as part of a lead-in phrase to the source material. A lead-in phrase is something that goes at the beginning of the quote. It's attached to the quote. It's not separate. It's all part of the same sentence. But it lets the other person know, hey, this isn't this person's idea. They got this information from somewhere else. Also, integrating sources. means that you need to make sure that the quote, paraphrase, summary, whatever it is, flows really smoothly within your writing. It shouldn't sound awkward or choppy or like it's dropped in with no purpose. Okay, you got to have some reason that you're including some sort of source. So here's an example of a quote, all right? And the lead-in phrase is highlighted in blue. So the example says, In What's So Bad About Being Poor, Charles Murray claims money has very little to do with a poverty-stricken life. You're going to notice that there's two sets of quotation marks in this. That is because in MLA, all titles are going to need to be marked. Since this is a title of an article, you put quotation marks around it. If it was a title of a book, it would go in italics. The general rule is that shorter works go in quotation marks, longer complete works, such as a full movie, book, those are going to be italicized. But just remember that all titles of source material should be marked one way or the other. You notice that the author's full name is included, so first and last. And all of this comes before the quote itself. Also pay close attention to the fact that it has this title, then it has the author's name, followed by a verb. What does the author do in that article? He's claiming something. He claims. So this is one way to set it up and there is lots of different types of lead-in phrases, different ways you can structure it. This is simply one example. And again, the highlighted part, that is the lead-in phrase and you can see that it's attached to the quote with a comma. Now the citation part of it, so that's just the lead-in phrase, the citation part of it is what comes after the quote. The citation is going to follow the source material. And it's also going to appear on a works cited page at the end of the essay. Now what you put within the essay and what you put at the works cited page are different. Okay, they have to match. There's some correlation that takes place. But it is not the exact same setup or the exact same stuff that you put in both places. So both parts are going to be needed for correct citation. Both parts are needed to avoid plagiarism. Okay, so again, really, really important to remember both ends of this. In-text citation, that is going to be what goes within the essay itself. All right, so this isn't the works cited page. This is literally within your essay. You did a quote. At the end of your quote, something has to go there. That's in-text citation. What happens is that at the end of your quote, paraphrase, or summary, you put parentheses at the end. And then... What goes in the parentheses? It kind of depends on the source you're using. If you're using a book with page numbers, you're gonna use page numbers. That's always kind of the first go-to. If not, then you kind of gotta see what the next piece of information is. Might be a website title, might be a book title, might even be a sponsor, editor, a paragraph number. Okay, so there's lots of other stuff that can go back there, but page numbers should always come first. And if you're ever unsure of what to put, Ask the librarian, ask your instructor, they will help you figure it out. Also, be careful with in-text citation. You already had this lead-in phrase to introduce your quote, paraphrase, or summary. So whatever comes at the end in parentheses, it's not going to be repeated information. It's not going to be the exact same thing that was found in that initial lead-in phrase. One other small note. Is the period to end your sentence, so you have this quote, you put your parentheses, inside of the parentheses you put your page number. Where does the period to end this sentence come? It actually comes after that last parentheses, not before. So you include the parentheses in the in-text citation as part of the final sentence for your quote, your paraphrase, or your summary. So here's an example of what the in-text citation looks like. So same exact quote that I used before. What is in red now, that's called your in-text citation. You'll notice that again it comes after the quotation mark. It's in parentheses. You just put the page number. You do not put page or pg or anything like that, just the number. And then the period comes after the last parentheses. Work cited. So this is the second part of citation. So you have basically set up your essay in visual MLA format. You have included some source material with lead-in phrases followed by in-text citation. Now you get to the end of the essay. That's where the work cited page comes in. The work cited page is literally a list of the sources used within the essay and it's attached to the end of your essay. It is in essence the last page of your essay. It needs to be formatted using MLA guidelines for visual formatting. And each type of source is going to require a little different citation. So it's always really, really important to actually look up how to do each one. This is not something that you're ever going to memorize. There's too many different types of sources out there. So it's always important when you're doing a works cited page to actually flip open your whatever you're using. If you're using a writer's handbook like the Little Seagull Handbook, flip that open. If you're looking at some other type of handbook, use that. If you are online, you can go different sources online and find out how to do it, but it's really, really important to look them up. So here's an example of what Icitation would look like on a Works Cited page for the same article that that quote came from that I used earlier. So I'm going to just kind of briefly walk you through this. This is a standard setup for any time you're taking what's called a work from an anthology. So that's the type of source that this was. This was a short article that was found in a longer work that had a whole bunch of articles in it. So this is how you would set it up. It's author's last name, comma, first name, period, the title of the article in quotation marks, the title of the anthology. You can also think of the title of the book. That goes in italics and comes directly after. Again, after that, you have a period. The editor, you just basically use the abbreviation ed, period. The editor's name was Lawrence Weinstein. Again, followed by a period. Boston is the city of publication, followed by a colon. Then the publisher, followed by a comma. The year of publication, also often referred to as the copyright date if you're looking inside your book's cover. Period. The range of the article. So how many pages, where did it start, where did it end? So this article went from page 26 through page 34. Again, period. And then it's followed by print. Print is the type of medium that this is. This was a print book or a print anthology. That's why it's called print. If you take something off the web, you would put web there. So this is a really basic format. Now you can notice a couple things. There's a lot of capitalization in this. So you want to be really close to your capitalization. Also, there's a lot of punctuation marks. So it's really important to pay close attention to those little details. Finally, you may notice that the author's last name kind of sticks out from the rest of it. That's because when you're doing your citations on your works cited page, you're going to create what are called hanging indents. That's what this is. Okay. And depending on what type of word program you're working with, you can look up how to do a hanging indent. So just something to note. That's the only real difference between the works cited page and the rest of the visual format in the essay. You still double space this page. It would still need to be in Times New Roman 12 point font. If you have multiple sources, you're going to alphabetize them starting with the author's last name. So if I used someone who had a name that had, say, an A that started the last name, they would come before Charles Murray. So I wanted to kind of follow that up with an example of a quote, a paraphrase, and a summary, and just how these look when they're mixed to each other, and just to kind of point out again the similarities and the differences. So this all came from that same article. So the first one is the same quote that I used for the other two. So I'm not going to read through it, but this is a place where you can refer back and check to see if you're setting up your own quotes correctly. The paraphrase is what follows. So paraphrase, it does need to be significantly different from the original quote. It is not okay to just change a word or two and call it a paraphrase. So. How this is set up is I started it different. So this is a different lead-in phrase. So the lead-in phrase for the paraphrase is, according to Charles Murray in What's So Bad About Being Poor, comma. That's the lead-in phrase. Then the paraphrase directly follows. And you'll see that the paraphrase does not have quotation marks around it because it is not a direct quote. So it says, according to Charles Murray in What's So Bad About Being Poor, A lack of money is not a major factor of someone living in poverty. This is the quote that paraphrased. So in other words, I took the exact same quote that I'd been using and I put it into my own words. You'll see that it's not just swapping a word or here. It still has the exact same meaning. I didn't change the meaning at all. I just put it into my own words. Again, has to follow with that. Page 34, that's where it came from in the book. And text citation still needs to be there. Now the summary. The summary is a summary of the article. So you can see that it's longer because it's covering a whole article and not just a single line. Now, I could have taken maybe a paragraph and put a summary of a paragraph into a single sentence. But this is a summary of the article. So this is kind of what it could sound like. And again, you'll see that there's a different introductory phrase. The introductory phrase for this one says, Charles Murray argues in What's So Bad About Being Poor. That's the introductory phrase or the lead-in phrase. Everything that follows is then a summary. So what is it he argues? He argues that people in Western countries have a distorted definition of poverty, which leads citizens viewing or leads to citizens viewing poverty in a negative way. Now the next sentence, it says Murray explains that is also a lead in phrase. So every sentence in the summary, or if you have a paraphrase with multiple sentences in it, every sentence has to have a lead in phrase. Now, Since we know who Murray is, I just introduced him in the previous one, right? I gave you a full name, gave the title. So for the second sentence, it's okay to just use his last name. And the last name is correct. That's what you would use, followed by a verb. So this time, Murray is explaining something. So Murray explains that materialistic values are prioritized in these countries over access to resources. Therefore, the more money one has, the more they can buy. However, Murray continues, so again, new sentence, Murray continues to explain that a lack of these items does not mean that someone is unhappy. In fact, Murray shows, so again, that repetitive going back over and over, you have to have a lead-in phrase for every sentence in a summary containing source material, okay, or any sentence containing source material. So it says, in fact, Murray shows that a person's happiness is dependent upon having access to basic resources, just such as shelter and water. He concludes that a person can be living in poverty and live a happy, fulfilling life. All right. So again, that he concludes, Murray continues, Murray explains, and then the full lead-in phrase at the beginning, those are all called lead-in phrases. Each sentence needs to have one. Now to signal that it's the end of the summary, that's where the parenthetical citation goes. Now since this is an entire article that I summarized, it is going to also have then the full article span or the full pages of the article. So 26 through 34. If this was just from one page, you would include one page number. So here are some tips for success as you start sort of working through this and learning more about MLA. As you're using sources in an essay, make sure that you are citing while you are writing. In other words, do not put someone else's idea in your essay and not include the lead-in phrase, the in-text citation, and the works cited entry at that point. You want to do it as you go. It's really easy to put it off until later. and then maybe forget or maybe miss one of the pieces and end up with plagiarism. Pay really close attention to the details. As some of you noticed when we did the MLA visual formatting, MLA is all about the little details, so you really want to pay close attention to those when you're using MLA format for both citation and using sources as well as that visual overall formatting. If in doubt, Look it up or ask. Do not just guess, all right? You really want to make sure that you're doing it correctly. Now, who can you ask? Well, you can always ask your instructor, you can ask librarians, and you can also ask writing tutors for assistance. So there's lots of people you have access to that can help you out, but make sure that you're asking. And again, looking it up, writer's handbooks are excellent places for that. Remember when you are doing the quotes or paraphrases or summaries within your essay that there should always be something before it and always something after. If you're missing half of that puzzle, you're going to have some issues with plagiarism. Also, it's probably not going to flow very well or work for the purpose of your essay. So really, really important to make sure that you always have something that's coming before that lead-in phrase, something coming after the in-text citation. Don't forget the We're Excited page. Sometimes it's easy to do all the other parts, but then not have that list of sources at the end. Without that citation page, It's still going to be considered plagiarism. It's not complete. It's not going to be there. You have to have the works cited page because that works cited page is what gives your audience, your reader, all the information they need to go and view the sources you used for themselves. Without it, they can't check the accuracy of your quote or the accuracy of your summary or paraphrase. They don't have the access to it. So really important to always make sure and include that. Just as kind of a final note about doing anything with MLA format, just keep in mind that you are learning. So it's not expected to be perfect, but it is expected that you are paying close enough attention that you're avoiding plagiarism. Plagiarism is not something that's going to be tolerated in any writing course in college. I shouldn't even say writing course. In any class in college, it's not going to be tolerated. So it's really important to pay attention. And then. Just remember that when we talk about MLA, that means that visual format, how you integrate your sources within the essay, the in-text citation that you include after each source, and the works cited page. All four of those things come together, and all together that's what MLA format is. Again, any questions, please don't hesitate to ask, and good luck!

Hello everyone! This is a video introducing the basics of MLA. We've already touched on and talked about how to visually set up MLA format.

This video is about integrating sources and citing them within your essay. So first of all, just what is a source? A source is basically any information that you have taken from somewhere else, so somewhere other than you.

It may be something someone else said. It may be something that you found in a book or in an article or an interview, television show, news channel, again, anywhere that's not from your own brain. It doesn't matter if it's spoken or written, so something really important to remember that when we're talking about sources in college, a source can be something that you heard from someone just as easily as it can be something that was written and published. Rephrasing information, so in other words, putting it into your own words, right?

So taking a quote, you rephrase it, you make it sound like you. That's still considered source material, and you have to give credit to wherever it came from. Also, just always kind of keep in your head that the way to avoid plagiarism in college is to make sure that you're crediting your sources correctly, which is basically what MLA is all about. That's it. how you avoid plagiarism in your writing.

In order to avoid plagiarism, it's important to know the different ways that you can incorporate source material into your writing. And there's three basic ways to format source material. You can use a quote, and a quote is where you're taking the wording directly from someone's mouth, directly from the page, exactly as it is.

And you put it in quotation marks. That signals to someone that it is, in fact, a quote. A paraphrase is where you take something that was written or someone said, maybe it's a sentence, and you put it into your own words.

That's a paraphrase. Paraphrases are roughly the same length as the original, so if you paraphrase something that's one sentence long, your paraphrase is going to be also about one sentence long. Summary and paraphrase, very, very similar. Okay, so they both actually require that you rephrase whatever the source material was or is. When it comes to summarizing, however, the big difference is that in a summary, you're actually condensing the information.

So instead of, say, paraphrasing one sentence, maybe you actually want to summarize an entire article, and you want to summarize it into a really short paragraph. so that you can include that article's main point within your essay. Well, when you're summarizing, you're condensing the information. So you're giving the five-minute version of something. It isn't the, you know, same length, nothing like that.

It is going to be a shorter version. And that is summarize. When you summarize or paraphrase, it is going to require the same sorts of citation that a quote does. only difference is that a quote you put quotation marks around it and a paraphrase and summary you do not. Okay so it doesn't matter which of these ways you choose they all have to be integrated they all need to be cited.

Now as far as integrating sources what that means is that when you put a quote a paraphrase summary into your essay you need to introduce the source material and make it clear that it's not your own ideas or information. So that typically involves author's full name and title as part of a lead-in phrase to the source material. A lead-in phrase is something that goes at the beginning of the quote. It's attached to the quote. It's not separate.

It's all part of the same sentence. But it lets the other person know, hey, this isn't this person's idea. They got this information from somewhere else.

Also, integrating sources. means that you need to make sure that the quote, paraphrase, summary, whatever it is, flows really smoothly within your writing. It shouldn't sound awkward or choppy or like it's dropped in with no purpose. Okay, you got to have some reason that you're including some sort of source. So here's an example of a quote, all right?

And the lead-in phrase is highlighted in blue. So the example says, In What's So Bad About Being Poor, Charles Murray claims money has very little to do with a poverty-stricken life. You're going to notice that there's two sets of quotation marks in this.

That is because in MLA, all titles are going to need to be marked. Since this is a title of an article, you put quotation marks around it. If it was a title of a book, it would go in italics.

The general rule is that shorter works go in quotation marks, longer complete works, such as a full movie, book, those are going to be italicized. But just remember that all titles of source material should be marked one way or the other. You notice that the author's full name is included, so first and last. And all of this comes before the quote itself. Also pay close attention to the fact that it has this title, then it has the author's name, followed by a verb.

What does the author do in that article? He's claiming something. He claims.

So this is one way to set it up and there is lots of different types of lead-in phrases, different ways you can structure it. This is simply one example. And again, the highlighted part, that is the lead-in phrase and you can see that it's attached to the quote with a comma. Now the citation part of it, so that's just the lead-in phrase, the citation part of it is what comes after the quote.

The citation is going to follow the source material. And it's also going to appear on a works cited page at the end of the essay. Now what you put within the essay and what you put at the works cited page are different.

Okay, they have to match. There's some correlation that takes place. But it is not the exact same setup or the exact same stuff that you put in both places. So both parts are going to be needed for correct citation. Both parts are needed to avoid plagiarism.

Okay, so again, really, really important to remember both ends of this. In-text citation, that is going to be what goes within the essay itself. All right, so this isn't the works cited page.

This is literally within your essay. You did a quote. At the end of your quote, something has to go there.

That's in-text citation. What happens is that at the end of your quote, paraphrase, or summary, you put parentheses at the end. And then... What goes in the parentheses?

It kind of depends on the source you're using. If you're using a book with page numbers, you're gonna use page numbers. That's always kind of the first go-to.

If not, then you kind of gotta see what the next piece of information is. Might be a website title, might be a book title, might even be a sponsor, editor, a paragraph number. Okay, so there's lots of other stuff that can go back there, but page numbers should always come first. And if you're ever unsure of what to put, Ask the librarian, ask your instructor, they will help you figure it out. Also, be careful with in-text citation.

You already had this lead-in phrase to introduce your quote, paraphrase, or summary. So whatever comes at the end in parentheses, it's not going to be repeated information. It's not going to be the exact same thing that was found in that initial lead-in phrase. One other small note.

Is the period to end your sentence, so you have this quote, you put your parentheses, inside of the parentheses you put your page number. Where does the period to end this sentence come? It actually comes after that last parentheses, not before. So you include the parentheses in the in-text citation as part of the final sentence for your quote, your paraphrase, or your summary.

So here's an example of what the in-text citation looks like. So same exact quote that I used before. What is in red now, that's called your in-text citation.

You'll notice that again it comes after the quotation mark. It's in parentheses. You just put the page number.

You do not put page or pg or anything like that, just the number. And then the period comes after the last parentheses. Work cited.

So this is the second part of citation. So you have basically set up your essay in visual MLA format. You have included some source material with lead-in phrases followed by in-text citation.

Now you get to the end of the essay. That's where the work cited page comes in. The work cited page is literally a list of the sources used within the essay and it's attached to the end of your essay. It is in essence the last page of your essay. It needs to be formatted using MLA guidelines for visual formatting.

And each type of source is going to require a little different citation. So it's always really, really important to actually look up how to do each one. This is not something that you're ever going to memorize. There's too many different types of sources out there.

So it's always important when you're doing a works cited page to actually flip open your whatever you're using. If you're using a writer's handbook like the Little Seagull Handbook, flip that open. If you're looking at some other type of handbook, use that.

If you are online, you can go different sources online and find out how to do it, but it's really, really important to look them up. So here's an example of what Icitation would look like on a Works Cited page for the same article that that quote came from that I used earlier. So I'm going to just kind of briefly walk you through this.

This is a standard setup for any time you're taking what's called a work from an anthology. So that's the type of source that this was. This was a short article that was found in a longer work that had a whole bunch of articles in it.

So this is how you would set it up. It's author's last name, comma, first name, period, the title of the article in quotation marks, the title of the anthology. You can also think of the title of the book.

That goes in italics and comes directly after. Again, after that, you have a period. The editor, you just basically use the abbreviation ed, period. The editor's name was Lawrence Weinstein. Again, followed by a period.

Boston is the city of publication, followed by a colon. Then the publisher, followed by a comma. The year of publication, also often referred to as the copyright date if you're looking inside your book's cover.

Period. The range of the article. So how many pages, where did it start, where did it end?

So this article went from page 26 through page 34. Again, period. And then it's followed by print. Print is the type of medium that this is. This was a print book or a print anthology.

That's why it's called print. If you take something off the web, you would put web there. So this is a really basic format. Now you can notice a couple things.

There's a lot of capitalization in this. So you want to be really close to your capitalization. Also, there's a lot of punctuation marks. So it's really important to pay close attention to those little details. Finally, you may notice that the author's last name kind of sticks out from the rest of it.

That's because when you're doing your citations on your works cited page, you're going to create what are called hanging indents. That's what this is. Okay.

And depending on what type of word program you're working with, you can look up how to do a hanging indent. So just something to note. That's the only real difference between the works cited page and the rest of the visual format in the essay.

You still double space this page. It would still need to be in Times New Roman 12 point font. If you have multiple sources, you're going to alphabetize them starting with the author's last name. So if I used someone who had a name that had, say, an A that started the last name, they would come before Charles Murray.

So I wanted to kind of follow that up with an example of a quote, a paraphrase, and a summary, and just how these look when they're mixed to each other, and just to kind of point out again the similarities and the differences. So this all came from that same article. So the first one is the same quote that I used for the other two.

So I'm not going to read through it, but this is a place where you can refer back and check to see if you're setting up your own quotes correctly. The paraphrase is what follows. So paraphrase, it does need to be significantly different from the original quote.

It is not okay to just change a word or two and call it a paraphrase. So. How this is set up is I started it different.

So this is a different lead-in phrase. So the lead-in phrase for the paraphrase is, according to Charles Murray in What's So Bad About Being Poor, comma. That's the lead-in phrase.

Then the paraphrase directly follows. And you'll see that the paraphrase does not have quotation marks around it because it is not a direct quote. So it says, according to Charles Murray in What's So Bad About Being Poor, A lack of money is not a major factor of someone living in poverty.

This is the quote that paraphrased. So in other words, I took the exact same quote that I'd been using and I put it into my own words. You'll see that it's not just swapping a word or here.

It still has the exact same meaning. I didn't change the meaning at all. I just put it into my own words.

Again, has to follow with that. Page 34, that's where it came from in the book. And text citation still needs to be there.

Now the summary. The summary is a summary of the article. So you can see that it's longer because it's covering a whole article and not just a single line.

Now, I could have taken maybe a paragraph and put a summary of a paragraph into a single sentence. But this is a summary of the article. So this is kind of what it could sound like. And again, you'll see that there's a different introductory phrase.

The introductory phrase for this one says, Charles Murray argues in What's So Bad About Being Poor. That's the introductory phrase or the lead-in phrase. Everything that follows is then a summary.

So what is it he argues? He argues that people in Western countries have a distorted definition of poverty, which leads citizens viewing or leads to citizens viewing poverty in a negative way. Now the next sentence, it says Murray explains that is also a lead in phrase.

So every sentence in the summary, or if you have a paraphrase with multiple sentences in it, every sentence has to have a lead in phrase. Now, Since we know who Murray is, I just introduced him in the previous one, right? I gave you a full name, gave the title.

So for the second sentence, it's okay to just use his last name. And the last name is correct. That's what you would use, followed by a verb. So this time, Murray is explaining something.

So Murray explains that materialistic values are prioritized in these countries over access to resources. Therefore, the more money one has, the more they can buy. However, Murray continues, so again, new sentence, Murray continues to explain that a lack of these items does not mean that someone is unhappy. In fact, Murray shows, so again, that repetitive going back over and over, you have to have a lead-in phrase for every sentence in a summary containing source material, okay, or any sentence containing source material. So it says, in fact, Murray shows that a person's happiness is dependent upon having access to basic resources, just such as shelter and water.

He concludes that a person can be living in poverty and live a happy, fulfilling life. All right. So again, that he concludes, Murray continues, Murray explains, and then the full lead-in phrase at the beginning, those are all called lead-in phrases.

Each sentence needs to have one. Now to signal that it's the end of the summary, that's where the parenthetical citation goes. Now since this is an entire article that I summarized, it is going to also have then the full article span or the full pages of the article. So 26 through 34. If this was just from one page, you would include one page number.

So here are some tips for success as you start sort of working through this and learning more about MLA. As you're using sources in an essay, make sure that you are citing while you are writing. In other words, do not put someone else's idea in your essay and not include the lead-in phrase, the in-text citation, and the works cited entry at that point. You want to do it as you go.

It's really easy to put it off until later. and then maybe forget or maybe miss one of the pieces and end up with plagiarism. Pay really close attention to the details. As some of you noticed when we did the MLA visual formatting, MLA is all about the little details, so you really want to pay close attention to those when you're using MLA format for both citation and using sources as well as that visual overall formatting.

If in doubt, Look it up or ask. Do not just guess, all right? You really want to make sure that you're doing it correctly. Now, who can you ask? Well, you can always ask your instructor, you can ask librarians, and you can also ask writing tutors for assistance.

So there's lots of people you have access to that can help you out, but make sure that you're asking. And again, looking it up, writer's handbooks are excellent places for that. Remember when you are doing the quotes or paraphrases or summaries within your essay that there should always be something before it and always something after. If you're missing half of that puzzle, you're going to have some issues with plagiarism. Also, it's probably not going to flow very well or work for the purpose of your essay.

So really, really important to make sure that you always have something that's coming before that lead-in phrase, something coming after the in-text citation. Don't forget the We're Excited page. Sometimes it's easy to do all the other parts, but then not have that list of sources at the end. Without that citation page, It's still going to be considered plagiarism.

It's not complete. It's not going to be there. You have to have the works cited page because that works cited page is what gives your audience, your reader, all the information they need to go and view the sources you used for themselves.

Without it, they can't check the accuracy of your quote or the accuracy of your summary or paraphrase. They don't have the access to it. So really important to always make sure and include that. Just as kind of a final note about doing anything with MLA format, just keep in mind that you are learning.

So it's not expected to be perfect, but it is expected that you are paying close enough attention that you're avoiding plagiarism. Plagiarism is not something that's going to be tolerated in any writing course in college. I shouldn't even say writing course.

In any class in college, it's not going to be tolerated. So it's really important to pay attention. And then. Just remember that when we talk about MLA, that means that visual format, how you integrate your sources within the essay, the in-text citation that you include after each source, and the works cited page.

All four of those things come together, and all together that's what MLA format is. Again, any questions, please don't hesitate to ask, and good luck!

Transcript for:Understanding MLA Format for Citing Sources

Transcript for:
Understanding MLA Format for Citing Sources