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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

MLA Referencing Style

MLA Referencing style is one of the most popular style formats. It’s a standard guide for graduate students, scholars and professional writers. It is often found in the US, Canada and other countries providing guidelines for writing and documentation of research in the subjects of Humanities, especially in English studies.
It stands for Modern Language Association of America. It was first published in 1985. The MLA style has been widely adopted by schools, colleges, Universities and by many academic departments and instructors. They are also used by over 1100 scholarly and literary journals, newsletters and magazines and commercial presses and they are followed throughout North America, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Taiwan and in other countries around the world.
The purpose of MLA style is primarily academic scholars, Professors, graduate students and other writers of scholarly books and articles in humanities disciplines such as English and other modern languages and literature require submitting their manuscripts following MLA Style. Generally simpler and more concise than other styles, MLA style features brief parenthetical citations in the text keyed to an alphabetical list of works cited that appears at the end of the work.
The MLA Style documentation format shall be
Works cited
MLA Style provides a bibliography of “works cited” listed in the works cited in a text and notes (either footnotes and/or endnotes) which is placed after the main body of term paper, article, or a book.
Content notes
In composing content notes, it is directed to avoid lengthy discussions that divert the reader’s attention from primary text, and advised in general comments that you cannot fit into text should omitted unless it provides essential justification or clarification of what is written.
Bibliography (“works cited”)
Book
The author’s last name, first name, middle initial or name. Place of publication: publisher, date. Print. Supplementary information (if any).
Ex: Dickens, Charles: Pickwick Papers: Chapman & Hall, 1837.print
Article in a periodical or a magazine
Author’s last name, first name, middle name, article title, title of the periodical, volume No. of the periodical if any, issue number, year, month and the day of the periodical, as available, pages inclusive.
Ex: Brophy, Mike. “Driving Force.” Hockey News 21 Mar.2006: 16-19. Print.
Internet resources
Name of the author of webpage (last name, first name, middle initial or middle name). ”Article Title,” “Title of Webpage”. Sponsoring Agency, date of publication or date on which it was last modified. Web address and date on which accessed.
Ex: CNN and Reuters. “Boston Columnist Resigns Amid New Plagiarism Charges.” Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., 19 Aug. 1998. Web. 6 Mar.2009.
CD-ROM
Name of the author (last name, first name and /or middle name [as given]). Article title printed source. Periodical title of printed source, or title of printed analogue Date: inclusive pages. Title of database. CD-ROM. Name of the vendor or computer service. Electronic-publication data or data for access.
Ex: Reed, William. “Whites and the entertainment industry.” Tennessee Tribune 25 Dec.1996: Ethnic News Watch. CD-ROM. Data Technologies, Feb.1997.
Reference:
www.mla.org/style.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm
http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla
http://studyguide.org/MLAdocumentation.htm
http://www.aresearchguide.com/12biblio.html#9

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3 comments:

Phil said...

For a layman, which is better? MLA or APA? What are the other referencing styles?

shubhajyoti said...

There are Harvard, Chicago and other styles as well. It can't be said which one is better. Each different style of refferecing has its uniqueness. It is like an authentication of the essay or report you are writing. The sources should be recognized by any form of referencing that you choose or that is approved by your organization.

Timothy said...

I guess the purpose of any referencing style is whether the parts can be traced back conveniently to the original contributors. In that sense the new APA format is better because it asks for the exact page number of the source where the reference content is. Anyways kudos to HwA for putting this up