Let's talk about how you would cite an
academic article following the MLA
guidelines eighth edition. Now there are
two ways to cite an academic article. So
it really depends if the article is in
printed form or if you found it in a
database, and we'll have a look at both
of these in order. So let's start with a
printed article, and what you can see is
that there are really three parts to
this kind of entry. So we start with the
author. The author's
name is inverted, so last name "," and
then first name. And then we have this
period here, and after each major element
in a citation, we place a period. Whereas,
inside that element we tend to use
commas. Then we're going to go to our
second element here. We have the title,
and notice the
use of quotation marks here. So titles of
academic articles go in between
quotation marks. And then we want to
capitalize all the important words, so
notice that some of these words are
capitalized; whereas, others are not. And
there are some specific rules for that,
but in general you don't have to
capitalize articles and minor
prepositions and so on. The exception
would be after a colon, for instance,
then it's almost like you're starting
over, and so we do need a capital for
"an." So that's the second entry.
The third part of your citation is
what's called the container. And a
container in MLA formatting
is the unit that holds this
particular article. So what we find here
is that this whole container is a
periodical, or a journal, and so this goes
all the way from research here all the
way to the end of the citation. This is
the third part of our citation. And you
can see now that there are commas in
between all the elements here, and we're
setting things off with commas. And then
when we get to the end, we have a period.
So what goes into the container? Well,
we first start with the title of
the
periodical, which we italicized, and
notice again the capitalization. Then we
have the volume and number, and what that
refers to is that each periodical
publishes in installments. So typically
they might publish four times a year,
let's say, every three months, and so the
number refers to when in the year they
publish. So number
one would mean that this would be the
first issue for this particular year.
The volume refers to a collection of a
number of these issues. So every
single issue in 2005 would likely be
part of volume 5. So then we have
the date after that, 2005, and notice
again all the commas separating this
information. The month here, December,
this is optional, so you don't have to
give the month, but if you do, you can
abbreviate it and stick it in there. Then
we have the page range at the very end.
And if you were to have an article that
only takes up one page, you would just
put "P." and then give the page. What
is meant by the page range,
incidentally, is that you're trying to
give a sense of where the article starts
and ends. So number one here refers to
the first page of the article, and fourteen is
the very final page. And that would be
the final page when
all the citations are done as well, so if
there's a work cited at the end, do
include it in the page range. That's all
you need to do for your default
article entry. And next we'll have a
brief look as well at what you can do
for articles that appear in a database.
So if the article does appear in a
database, there are three options
for how you would cite it, and we've
given a couple here. One of them is to
give what's called a DOI number. And
a DOI number refers to a digital
object
identifier. And what that means is that
this number is going to stay with the
article, and that way you'll still be
able to find the article even if the
website changes or the database has
changed its appearance and so on. So this
is the preferred method, the DOI. If you
can find one for a database, that would
be great. The second option, second best,
is to find what's called a persistent
URL. And a
persistent URL is one that's often a
little bit abbreviated, doesn't have all
that other kind of garbage that goes
with it, a little bit shorter, and it's
going to stay the same, again, even if the
website or the database changes a little
bit. So that's your second option.
The third option is just to take the URL
right out of your browser, copy and paste
it, and provide that. So those are
your three options. If you do give the
URL, so either option two or three, you
can get rid of the little bit that
comes before (this is especially true for
this third option here). You can get rid
of this HTTP bit at the beginning,
sometimes HTTPS as well, so you don't
need that in your particular citation
here. The other thing you can do with a
URL is you can break it up. So you can
see these slashes, and at the end of your
line if you wanted to, if your URL was
really long, you could break it up there
so that it doesn't create this
awkward spacing in your works cited
entry. Watch out that your URL does not
become a hyperlink. So sometimes if you
keep typing after URL, it'll give that
kind of blue line underneath. You don't
want that, so as soon as that happens,
just press Ctrl+Z, and that will undo
that particular change. The exception
would be if you are publishing your
works cited page in an online context,
then a URL might be quite nice
because then people can actually
click on it and get to the original
source. So in these database entries then,
you have those three options: DOI,
persistent URL, or URL. And try to pick
one of those three if you can. The other
thing you need just before that is the
title of the database. So we've placed
the title of the database here, and then
a comma, then the URL, and then a period.
You can see we've done the same thing
here. So there are lots of databases out
there: there's JSTOR, MLA Database,
EBSCO host--there's just a ton of
these different databases. And it's nice
if you can give that detail with your
citation if you do know it. One optional
element here, and this is "accessed," the
access date, so if you think that your
URL might change a lot (this is
especially true for option three here),
then you're allowed to give an access
date in this format. And this just tells
the reader when you last checked the
particular article, in case there is a
kind of change that happens. But this is
completely optional in the eighth edition
of the MLA, so you can definitely leave
it out if you like. So that's basically
it for how to cite an article. Just a
last few things to notice here--notice
the hanging in the indentation. So
hanging indentation refers to the way,
after the first line in each entry, you
add a tab space. And you can see we've
added extra tab spaces further down as
our entries get longer. So that's
definitely one thing to watch out for.
And then the last thing to notice is
that we talked about containers before,
and we talked about how there's just one
container in our first entry. If you look
at the second and the third entry now,
the database is essentially a second
container. So if you wanted a
graphic image of this, what we have is we
have this article which is found inside
a journal or periodical, which, again, is
found inside a database. And that's how
that container system
works--you deal with one section by
itself and then you cite it within these
other sections. Last thing--and I
promise I'll stop soon--if your
instructor suggests that you don't need
to give the database, even though you did
read the article online, then that's
perfectly fine. And in fact, the irony is
that many academics who publish articles,
when they use the MLA citation guide,
they tend to not give the database, so
that's quite common in academic
publishing, even though professors often
do ask their students to provide the
database. So think about what your
professor wants and try to please
him or her, I suppose. So
hopefully you found this useful, and all the
best with your citations.