Honors Biology MLA Citation Presentation Part 1: Intro to MLA and Works Cited

Today’s Plan: Bellwork: Go over citation format and searching (15 mins) Media center (the rest of class)

What is MLA Format When writing research papers, it’s necessary to cite, or give credit to the sources you’ve used to find information. This includes in-text citations, ex: according to Jefferson, . . . This also includes direct, EXACT quotations And finally includes a list of sources that you have cited in your paper (either by in-text citation or quote) The Modern Language Association has a set of rules for how to properly cite resources in a research paper

In-Text Citations There are several ways to cite information in- text, but no matter what, you need the page number to do the citation. Note, the page numbers are in parentheses. If you don’t have the page numbers, the year is an acceptable substitute Method 1: Acknowledge the author or work in the text According to Smith and Jones, twenty thousand people worldwide accumulated these mutations (264) Method 2: Parenthetical acknowledgement Twenty thousand people worldwide accumulated these mutations over time (Smith and Jones, 264)

Quotations If you are quoting, you can use the same format as in-text citations. However, you need to make sure to put quotation marks around the EXACT words the author said. If the quotation is more than 4-lines long, you indent it (both left and right indentations) and single-space it. You still site the same way. Questions about in-text citations and quotes? See the information at this link: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/

The Works Cited Page This is normally the last page of your paper and is similar to a bibliography Since this is the first thing you’ll turn in, we’ll start here, but normally you’d put this together at the end In general, it is an alphabetized list of your resources in the following format: Author’s Last name, first name. Title. Publisher, Date. Type of resource (print, email) Each type of resources that you use, however, is cited differently, so you’ll need to look up how to do each type of citation (tv show, website, book, article in a newspaper, article in a periodical, etc). DO NOT just copy the above format and expect that you’re right Always Double-space the works cited page and pay attention to the indentation you see above

Sources to help you Sample works cited page: http://homeworktips.about.com/od/mlastyle/ig/Sample-MLA-Pages/workscited.htm Look up how to cite specific reference types: http://www.palmyra.k12.pa.us/MLAStyle2.pdf http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/citations/index.html?page=mla_print Free tool for storing citations electronically: http://www.zotero.org/ Sources to check your citation: http://citationmachine.net/index2.php http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/citationbuilder/

Types of Sources Primary Sources=original material straight from the researcher who discovered, invented, created the idea. Usually the first time they appear in print or electronically. Secondary Sources=material created as a commentary on or interpretation of the original source with the benefit of hindsight. This can also be a summary of findings in a newspaper or journal Tertiary Sources=summaries of primary and secondary resources, like encyclopedias

Today…. Start to find and bookmark articles for your research. Mrs. Hodges will teach you when we get down there how to navigate the Heritage Website Eventually you will need 7-9 sources. Today, try to find at least two. Read and summarize the article by answering the question.. What can be found in the article? And then take notes on it.