A Writer's Practical Guide
to MLA Documentation

Documentation will take two forms in your final paper:

• In the Works Cited section, where all the sources you've used should be listed alphabetically, and
• Within the text of your paper, where parentheses should show your readers where you found each piece of information that you have used. These textual citations allow the reader to refer to your Works Cited page(s) for further information.

This guide contains many examples of the kinds of resources that you might use in a research paper. Items set apart in a blue box like this one

show how the documentation for that particular kind of resource should look on the Works Cited page. Items set apart in a red box (with a dotted border) like this —

— show how this citation should appear in your text.

A Note on Footnotes and Endnotes

Footnotes (including citations at the bottom of each page) have not gone entirely the way of the dinosaurs. In fact it is ironic that footnotes were declared outmoded just before the era of the word-processors which make using footnotes so much easier. Still, because of its relative ease in both writing and reading, parenthetical documentation is greatly preferred by most instructors.

Endnotes (gathering citations and reference lists at the end of each chapter or at the end of the paper) have enjoyed a popularity among academic writers, primarily because they make the transition from a submitted manuscript to published resource so much easier. Even so, parenthetical documentation has supplanted both footnotes and endnotes in most academic disciplines.

For writers in some disciplines, however — most notably in some of the humanities disciplines such as music, art, religion, theology, and even (sometimes) history — footnotes are still widely in use. A wise student will check with his or her instructor to make sure that parenthetical documentation is an acceptable method of citing resources.

Using either footnotes or endnotes, writers refer their readers to citations and reference lists by means of a number at the end of a sentence, phrase or clause containing the language or idea requiring citation. The number appears as a superscript.¹⁵ No space appears between the period and the superscript number. There should be four spaces between the last line of text and the first footnote on each page. Footnotes should be first-line indented and single-spaced with a double-space between each footnote. If necessary, a footnote can be carried into a subsequent page. In that event, on the second page, create a solid line two spaces below the last line of text, include another double-space and then finish the footnote. Double-space before the next footnote.

Footnotes and endnotes appear with their corresponding superscript number and are written with the first line indented. The author's name will appear in normal order (not reversed), separated from the other information with a comma. Publication data (City: Press, year) appears in parentheses, and no period is used until the very end of the citation.

¹⁵Ronald E. Pepin, Literature of Satire in the Twelfth Century (Lewiston: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1988) 78.

¹⁶Christie, John S. "Fathers and Virgins: Garcia Marquez's Faulknerian Chronicle of a Death Foretold" Latin American Literary Review 13.3 (Fall 1993): 21-29.

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