I. Giving Credit in the Final Product:

A. In a research report or other academic assignment, you may borrow the ideas of other people, but you have to acknowledge that you borrowed them. Otherwise, you are committing plagiarism. You need to give credit to your sources both in the body of your report and in a list at the end of the report.

B. What do you need to give credit for? As a general rule, if the information can be found in several different sources, it is considered general knowledge and does not need to be credited to a particular person, unless you are using a direct quotation. Everything else needs to be documented.

II. Use Parenthetical References in Your Paper

A. Using parenthetical references simply means you credit the source of your information by putting the author’s name and page number in parentheses when you use the information in your paper.

B. Guidelines for parenthetical citations:

1. Source with one author: Last name of author and page number(s) if any (McPherson 93)

2. Source with no specific author: Title, or a shortened form of it, and page number(s) if any

3. Source with more than one author: (Ward, Burns, and Bruno 253)

4. More than one source by the same author: Author's last name, followed by the title or a shortened version of it, followed by the page number(s) (Cohen, Mysterious Places 3)

C. Examples:

1. “A myth is often something that only begins where our own five senses end” (Bierlein 5).

2. Greek mythology freed humans from the paralyzing fear of an omnipotent (all powerful) unknown. Their anthropomorphic gods “made heaven a pleasantly familiar place. The Greeks felt at home in it” (Hamilton 17).

III. Include a Bibliography (Works Cited) List at the End of Your Paper

A. Put the sources in alphabetical order by author’s last name.

B. Always put as much information as available for your source, including web pages.

C. The basic information for an entry should include:

1. author and/or editor names

2. title (or name of website)

3. any version numbers available

4. date of version, revision or posting (website)

5. publisher information (or organization responsible for website)

6. (for websites) date you accessed the material

7. (for websites) web address, printed between carets (< >)

D. Examples:

1. For books:

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. New York: New American Library, 1969.

2. For websites (always include the date you accessed the website because the content of web pages can change frequently):

National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers. 19 Dec. 1999. <http://www.nacgm.org/consumer/funfacts.html>.

3. For encyclopedias:

“Whales.” World Book. 1995.

“Middle Ages.” Encyclopedia Brittanica Online. Sep. 30, 2001.

4. For magazine articles:

Case. John. “Divorce in American Families.” Time. Oct. 17, 1990: 15-28.

Additional Resources:

Ask for help from your English teacher or the media-center staff. We have no problem answering questions! The media center keeps an up-to-date MLA style sheet available for students.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/06/

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite5.html

http://thewritesource.com/mla.htm