Listing Sources: Books Works Cited Listing Sources: Books

For our purposes, the simpler Works Cited page will suffice. All papers which contain in-text citations require a bibliography. The Modern Language Association recognizes two types of bibliography: 1. The shorter Works Cited, which only lists works referenced in your essay. The longer Works Consulted, which lists all works you may have examined during the preparation of your text. For our purposes, the simpler Works Cited page will suffice.

The Works Cited page is the last page (or more) of your essay. The page is numbered, just like all the other pages of your essay, and the title will be set up as follows: Hershberger 8 Works Cited

Order of Operations Book entries are alphabetized in a specific order: 1. Author, by last name. 2. Minor title. 3. Major title. 4. Date of original publication. 5. Place of publication. 6. Publisher. 7. Year of publication. 8. Pages cited. This order applies, with minor variations, to most other types of entry. Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1976. New York: Vintage, 1989. 6-7.

Locating Bibliographic Information To locate key bibliographic information, open your book to its main title page. A detailed record of publication data will be found on the back of this page.

Note that the title Works Cited is centered, but it is not Hershberger 1 Works Cited Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1976. New York: Vintage, 1989. Sale, Roger. Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E.B. White. Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard UP, 1979. 37-8. Zipes, Jack. Don’t Bet On the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England. 1987. New York: Routledge, 1989. Note, too, that the first line of each bibliographic entry is left justified and that all subsequent lines are indented. This makes it very easy to see the author’s last name. Note that the title Works Cited is centered, but it is not underlined, bolded, or in quotation marks. No matter what you may have been taught in the past, Works Cited entries are neither numbered nor bulleted.

Non-Book Sources There are, of course, specific methods for citing newspapers, periodicals, magazines, videos, television programs, films, works of art, interviews, Web sites, the Internet, maps, documents, tapes, etc. Our concern today is books. Remember, your reference texts outline appropriate citation methods for all sources and you should, therefore, familiarize yourself thoroughly with the MLA section of The Norton Field Guide to Writing. Should the Field Guide fail to answer your questions, the MLA Handbook is available in the reference section of the Library.

No normal human being can be expected to remember all of the ins and outs of MLA style—particularly as these evolve over time to embrace new technologies and needs. When in doubt, turn to the MLA Handbook, or to your Writer’s Reference.

PowerPoint Presentation by Mark A. Spalding, BA, MEd, MA, 2007. The End