Modern Language Association (MLA)

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has set the form of documentation used for scholarly writing in the study of literature, language, and much of the humanities. MLA style uses parenthetical citations, a means of documenting source materials within the text of the essay itself rather than citing them in footnotes or endnotes. Similarly, it is recommended that the author integrate as much information as possible about the source itself in the text rather than rely on lengthy, disruptive citations. Avoid in-text documentation that looks like this:

“Richardson’s is the dark vision of a nightmarish border world haunted by the horrors of both wilderness and garrison” (Hurley, The Borders of Nightmare 156).

Rather, use a signal phrase to introduce the author and/or text, and limit the parenthetical material to a simple page number wherever possible:

In The Borders of Nightmare: The Fiction of John Richardson, Michael Hurley
describes Richardson’s literary oeuvre as a “dark vision of a nightmarish border world haunted by the horrors of both wilderness and garrison” (156).

Below are some common examples of how to use MLA-style in-text documentation.

MLA In-Text Documentation

Direct quotation or paraphrase from a primary document or a secondary document: If the author's last name does not appear in your text, it must appear in the parenthesis along with the page number.

“Richardson’s gallery of the living dead, of the emotionally and spiritually maimed, is a prophetic one, as the works of other writers, especially those from Southwestern Ontario, testify” (Hurley 172).

Two or more sources by the same author: If you refer to more than one book or article by the same author, use a shortened version of the work's title in your citation.

“As a literary strategy, the gothic mode must have impressed Richardson as a particularly congenial vehicle for expressing both his own memories of border incidents as a soldier and POW as well as his countrymen’s response to a strange and unpredictable new land” (Hurley, Borders 158).

Three or more authors/editors: For the sake of economy, a Latin abbreviation, et al., meaning "and others," is used following the name of the first listed author or editor.

In language as in other matters, as linguists have noted, there is a “tendency for Canadians to resist the influence of their powerful neighbours in their assertion of an independent national identity” (Quirk et al. 21).

Poetry : When quoting less than 4 lines of poetry, incorporate the quotation into your text, indicating line endings with a slash (/) separated on either side by a single space. Reproduce the capitals and punctuation exactly as in the original. Line numbers are supplied in parentheses at the end of the quotation:

In "Snow," Avison suggests that our creative imagination is often
imprisoned: "Nobody stuffs the world in at your eyes. / The optic heart must
venture: a jail-break / And re-creation" (1-3).

Four or more lines of poetry should be indented ten spaces from the left margin and double-spaced. If the title of the poem is not included in the essay text, include a short form of the title in the parenthetical citation, followed by line numbers:

Leonard Cohen's ballad declares that heterosexual marriage is in crisis:

Now the clasp of this union, who fastens it tight

who snaps it asunder the very next night?

Some say the rider, some say the mare

some say love's like smoke, beyond all repair ("Absent Mare" 41-44)

Play: Act, scene, and line numbers are given—in that order—using Arabic numerals separated by periods.

"Cry ‘Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war" (Shakespeare 3.1.280).

Indirect source: If you are quoting from a source that quotes from another, use the abbreviation "qtd." as follows.

Robertson Davies has remarked that “Canada needs ghosts, as a dietary supplement, a vitamin taken to stave off that most dreadful of modern ailments, the Rational Rickets" (qtd. in Hurley 156).

Works Cited

Unlike Chicago style, MLA does not allow you to list any sources other than those that you cite within your essay. This list is therefore known as Works Cited. These words should appear in regular font, centered at the top of a separate, numbered page on which you list full bibliographic details of your sources. Below are examples of common Works Cited entries that, for illustrative purposes, largely showcase publications by faculty in RMC's Department of English.

One Author

Sri, P.S. T.S. Eliot: Vedanta and Buddhism. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1985.

Two or three authors

Shirinian, Lorne, and Alan Whitehorn. The Armenian Genocide: Resisting the
Inertia of Indifference. Kingston: Blue Heron Press, 2001.

More than three authors

Quirk, Randolph, et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.
London: Longman, 1985.

One editor

Avis, Walter, ed. A Concise Dictionary of Canadianisms. Toronto: Gage, 1972.

Two or three editors

Fee, Margery, and Janice McAlpine, eds. Guide to Canadian English Usage.
Toronto: OUP, 1997.
[OUP is established bibliographic shorthand for Oxford University Press.]

More than three editors

Vincent, Thomas et al., eds. Walter S. Avis: Essays and Articles. Occasional
Papers of the Department of English, RMC: 2, Kingston, 1978.

[The Latin abbreviation et al . (note the period), meaning "and others," is used conventionally as shorthand to indicate three or more collaborating editors or authors.]

Article from an anthology or compilation

Robinson, Laura. “‘A born Canadian’: The Bonds of Communal Identity in Anne
of Green Gables and A Tangled Web.” L. M. Montgomery and Canadian
Culture. Ed. Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly. Toronto: U Toronto P, 1999: 19-30.

[The use of U and P in the name of the publisher is established shorthand for
the words University and Press respectively.]

Literary work in an anthology:

Mansfield, Katherine. "The Daughters of the Late Colonel." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eds. M. H. Abrams et al. 6 th ed.
Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993. 2184-98.

[Titles of short stories and poems are enclosed in double quotation marks. Page numbers on which the work appears in the anthology are included at the end of the citation.]

Editions other than the first

Bonnycastle, Stephen. In Search of Authority: An Introductory Guide to Literary
Theory. 2nd ed. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1996.

Introductions, forewords, or prefaces

Kogawa, Joy. Foreword. Quest for Closure: The Armenian Genocide and the
Search for Justice. By Lorne Shirinian. Kingston: Blue Heron Press, 2000.
N. pag.

[The abbreviation N. pag. indicates that there is no pagination for the cited
material.]

Journal article (in issue with continuous pagination)

Robinson, Laura. “‘acts of self-exposure’: Closeted Desire in Atwood’s Cat’s
Eye.” English Studies in Canada 28 (2002): 223-46.

Journal article (in issue with separate pagination)

Shirinian, Lorne. “David Kherdian and the Ethnoautobiographical Impulse:
Rediscovering the Past.” MELUS 22.4 (1997): 77-89.

Article in a newspaper

Sri, P.S. “Don’t Call Me ‘East Indian.’” The Kingston Whig-Standard
8 Mar. 2004: 5.

Article in a magazine

Streight, Irwin. “A Modest Pronominal.” The Whig-Standard Magazine
5 May 1990: 23.

Internet source

Vincent, Thomas. “New Bibliographical Research Tools for Canadian Literature
Studies.” Bibliofiles. 15 November 2003. 20 December 2005
<http://www.bibliofiles.ca/lc_index.cfm>.

[The date of the electronic publication or of the site’s latest update is given first, followed by a period and the date the site was accessed.]

Film

Canada’s War in Colour. Dir. Karen Shopsowitz. YAP Films Inc., 2005.

Lecture or speech

Vincent, Thomas. “Mapping the Terrain: Explorations in Bibliographical
Software.” Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of Canada. University of Alberta. June 1989.

Book Review

Lukits, Steve. Rev. of Who Killed the Canadian Military?, by J.L Granatstein. The Globe and Mail 28 Feb. 2004: D5.

For more detailed and diverse examples of MLA citations, consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.).