SANTA BARBARA JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

WORKS CITED

Students at Santa Barbara Junior High School use the Modern Language Association (MLA) standard for citing sources used in research projects.  The samples below show the proper punctuation and information needed for each kind of source.  At the end of a project/report, the list of sources used is arranged in alphabetical order by author (or if there isn’t an author, by the first word in the title).  There is a sample Works Cited at the bottom of this page.                             

Ms. Glass, Library Media Teacher, Santa Barbara Jr. H.S.

ONE AUTHOR (book)

Shaw, Arnold.  Black Popular Music in America.  New York:  Schirmer Books, 1996.

TWO AUTHORS (book)

Resnik, Estelle and Jane Robertson.  Famous Women in American History.  Chicago:
            Grolier Corporation, 2005.
(Note that the second name is not inverted:  Jane Robertson, not Robertson, Jane.)
(Note that the second line, and any subsequent lines, are indented so that the author’s name stands out.  This is the form throughout Works Cited.)

MORE THAN TWO AUTHORS

Marine, April, et. al.  Internet:  Getting Started.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: 
            Prentice-Hall, 2000.
(If the place of publication is not a major city, such as New York, the city AND state must be included.)

EDITED OR COMPILED BOOK

Garcia, Jesus, ed.  Immigration and its Effects.  New York: Time-Life Books, 1999.
(In an edited book, the “author” puts together/compiles information from other sources so is the editor, not author.)

AN ANONYMOUS BOOK (no author is credited with the writing)

The World Almanac Book of Facts.  New York:  New American Library, 2002.

CORPORATE AUTHOR

Time-Life Books.  Lee and Grant at Appomattox.  Richmond, Virginia:  Time-Life
            Books, 1992.
(If many editors compile the book, no one person is credited with authorship; therefore, the company name is used in place of an author’s/editor’s name.)

ENCYLOPEDIA ARTICLE/ARTICLE IN A REFERENCE BOOK OR MULTI-VOLUME SET

Vorhaus, Louis J.  “Harriet Tubman.”  The World Book Encyclopedia.  2001 edition.
(Check at the end of  the encyclopedia article you are reading for the author’s name.)

ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE—not signed by an author

“Zeus.”  Encyclopedia Americana.  2000 edition.

SIGNED MAGAZINE ARTICLE (including citing articles from InfoTrac Web)

Tully, Shawn.  “The Universal Soldier.”  Newsweek  4 April 1997:  14-16.

UNSIGNED MAGAZINE ARTICLE (no author is credited with the writing)

“Gun Control Laws Proposed.”  Time  12 July 1998: 34-35.

SIGNED NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

Stanley, Alessandra.  “Russians Find Heroes in a New World.”  New York Times
            20 March 2000: c2454-2458.

UNSIGNED NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

“African Roots of American Music.”  Los Angeles Times   29 January 1994: 3.

FILM, VIDEOTAPE OR DVD

Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.  Dir. Al Smith.  With Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. Walt Disney Home Video, 1990.

PERSONAL INTERVIEW

Roberts, Jamie.  “Personal Interview.”  May 23, 2000.
     (Begin with the name of the person interviewed, last name first.)

THE INTERNET (World Wide Web) WITH AN AUTHOR/WEB MASTER

Arnett, Bill.  “Pluto.”  The Nine Planets. 1994-2005.  25 September 2005.  <http: 
            seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets.html>
(The Internet site has an author.)
(1994-2005—the dates the Web master updated the Web site, “copyright”)
(Two titles are included—“Pluto” and The Nine Planets—if you navigated from a home page to another place within the Web site.  The home page is The Nine Planets; ‘Pluto” is the section you navigated to and used for research.)

THE INTERNET—when you did NOT navigate to another part of the Web site.

Allen, Roger. Mars.   2001.  26 September 2005.  <www.marsplanet.ncl.html>
(2001—the date/year the Web site was last updated, “copyright.”)
(26 Sept. 2005—the date you logged into the computer)

THE INTERNET (World Wide Web)—NO AUTHOR IS LISTED

Pluto.  April 14, 2005.  NASA.  28 September 2005.    <www.planetspluto.html>
(The title is underlined as Pluto is the title of the home page; I did not navigate from a home page to a different place within the Web site.) 
(April 14, 2004—the last date the site was updated.  28 Sept. 2005—the date you logged in to the Web site.)
(NASA—the organization sponsoring the Web site.)

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SAMPLE WORKS CITED

Remember to arrange your list in alphabetical order by the author’s last name or, if there isn’t an author, by the first word in the title.  The articles a, an and the are excluded when arranging titles.  (Start with the second word in that case.)

Works Cited

Arnett, Bill.  “Pluto.”  The Nine Planets.  25 September 2005.  <http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets.html> 
(signed Web site with two titles)

Barnes-Svarney, Patricia.  Traveler’s Guide to the Solar System.  New York:  Sterling Publishing Company, 1993.
(book with one author)

“Pluto.”  The New Encyclopedia of Science.  1995 edition. 
(unsigned reference book article)

Pluto.  28 September 2005.  <www.solarsystem/plu.html>
(Web site with one title)

Vanden, Carly.  “Pluto.”  The World Book Encyclopedia.  2005 edition.
(signed article)

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When using outside sources, indicate right after each quotation, allusion or fact—very briefly in parentheses--where you found it/them.  This is called a parenthetical citation.  The list at the end of your project, listing all the sources you used, is the “Works Cited” section (see previous page).

Method for Parenthetical Citation

Give credit to the original source for information you borrow from it by inserting the author and page number in parentheses after the words or ideas borrowed.  Never borrow an idea without giving credit to the original source.  Place parenthetical citations where a pause would naturally occur to avoid disrupting the flow of your writing (usually at the end of a sentence).

Keep in mind two points:

1. Your citations must refer to sources listed in your “Works Cited” section.
2. Indicate as precisely as you can the location of cited references with page numbers, volume numbers, etc. 

The first time you use material from a given source mention the complete name of the author and the complete title of his/her work.  After the first use of the source, just use the author’s last name and page number in your text.            

Sample Parenthetical Citations

Standard Citation with One Author:
President Reagan cut the housing budget from $30 billion in 1981 to $3 billion in 1987 (Mathews 58).

Standard Citation with One Author Cited in Text:
Robert Mathews states, in “Reagan’s Budget Cuts Are a Myth,” that President Reagan cut the housing budget from $30 billion in 1981 to $3 billion in 1987 (58).

Standard Citation with Two Authors:
Students learned more than a full year’s Spanish in ten days using the complete supermemory method (Smith and Jones 51).

Indirect (Secondary) Source (sometimes called a “double reference)
Finally, the reader sees that Stephen was “alone.  He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life” (qtd. in O’Connor 373).  

Standard Citation from the Internet
Negroponte’s uncomplicated, personal tone fools the reader into a sense that his theses are simplistic (Herrington “Introduction”).  (Note: there are no page numbers in online sources so the location of the quotation is indicated by noting the section of the document in which the quotation occurs.)