Dr Matt McConeghy

How to do Citations

email Dr McConeghy or Return to MLA Style Page

When Must You do a Citation?

Plagiarism

Citing from the World Wide Web - (Modified MLA method)

and a simple Sample Citation Example

Citing from other Internet Sources - (Standard MLA method)

You must cite whenever you include a quotation or a piece of data from someone else's work.

And, you MUST give a citation even if you have altered the wording of the original material.

When Must You do a Citation? (MLA 6th Edit Sect 6.1, 6.2)

"You must indicate to your readers not only what works you used in writing the paper but also exactly what you derived from each source and exactly where in the work you found the material. The most practical way to supply this information is to insert a brief parenthetical acknowledgment in your paper wherever you incorporate another's words, facts or ideas." (J. Gibaldi MLA Handbook 238)

Sect 6.2 of the MLA Handbook says:

1. "References in the text must clearly point to specific sources in the list of Works Cited." (Gibaldi 238)

2. "The information in your parenthetical references must match the corresponding information in the entries in your list of works cited ." (Gibaldi 238)

2. You must "identify the location of the borrowed information as specifically as possible." (Gibaldi 239)

Plagiarism

( see MLA Handbook Sect 2.8)

Plagiarism

Plagiarism means presenting someone else's words or thoughts as if they were your own. Usually, this means that some student has copied another writer's work without giving them credit for it.

To plagiarize is "to use another person's ideas or expressions in your own writing without acknowledging the source" according to the MLA.

Plagiarism is cheating: it is stealing, lying, unethical and unprofessional. In academic life, where we must trust each other to speak and write honestly, plagiarism is a very serious offense and deserves to be punished with severe punishments, up to and including being Withdrawn from a course with an F or W grade.

You are not excused from doing citations if you alter the wording of borrowed material. It does not matter that you did not quote exactly what the other person said. What matters, is, did the material you have presented come basically from someone else's work, or from your own head as your original idea that you personally discovered or invented. If it is not your own, then you MUST cite, even if you altered the wording.

Especially note, that you may be asked by a professor to work together in doing your research, or discussing what you are to write. But if you turn in a paper with only your name on it, then all the work in the paper has to be your personal work, or else properly cited. You can research with someone else, but you must write your own paper. Don't plagiarize by accident. Accidental plagiarism, or ignorant plagiarism, is still plagiarism.

Common Knowledge (see MLA sect 2.7)

You do not have to give citations if the information you are using is "common knowledge". But, what can fairly be considered under this heading? In general, if a statement consists of information that everyone knows and there is not much argument about it, then you can consider it common knowledge.

"Rhode Island is a state in the northeastern United States."

OK, no citation unless someone wants to argue that RI is not in the northeastern USA!

Use this modification of the MLA method for information you found with your web browser (such as Netscape, or Internet Explorer) or a search engine (such as Google, Kartoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN Search, or Lycos)

If you are using some OTHER internet source other than a World Wide Web page, use the citation method listed below at MLA Standard

A Modified MLA Web Citation System for citing World Wide Web sources.

Who? What? When? Where?

The web has hundreds of millions of pages, and more than a million pages a day are added. The vast majority of these are made by amateurs who do not follow anyone's rules but their own. So, you face some problems when you want to use information from these sources.

Remember the basic rule of citation.

1. You want to tell who created this information you are using.
2. You want to tell what you are quoting from, that is, the title of the information source.
3. You want to tell when the page was created, and when you accessed it.
4. You want to tell where you got it --its exact electronic address.

This means that you have to try to find this information in the web page. Who wrote it, or edited it, or composed it, or is responsible for it. Then, does it have some kind of title? Since web pages tend to change radically from time to time, you need to pin it down -- try to find a date on the page that tells when it was made (date posted or revised), and then tell when you looked at it (access date). Then, exactly where is it? What is its web address, its URL (http://etc.) ?

An Example

Suppose you use information from the CIA World Factbook page on Burundi. That page has no author, and the title is either "Burundi" or "CIA - The World Factbook -- Burundi" depending on where you look on the page. The web address is http:// www.odci.gov/ cia/publications/ factbook/ geos/by.html , but the page has no date and there are no page numbers.

Do the best you can. Make a Works Cited entry like this:

"Burundi" accessed 10 July 2002 <http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/ factbook/geos/by.html>

Each time you include "words, facts or ideas" from that internet page in your text, then you must put a parenthetic citation in the paper.

Your paper will look like this:

In the last few years fighting in Burundi has been severe and "ethnic violence between Hutu and Tutsi factions...created hundreds of thousands of refugees and left at least 250,000 dead." (Burundi)

If you get some information from another page, the Works Cited entry might look like this:

Booker, Salih "Africa Action" 12 Sept 2002 15 Sept 2002 <http://allafrica.com/stories/ 200209120035.html>

when you add some information from that page, then the paragraph will be like this:

In the last few years fighting in Burundi has been severe and "ethnic violence between Hutu and Tutsi factions... created hundreds of thousands of refugees and left at least 250,000 dead." (Burundi).  Other terrorist acts have included the murder of 279 Kenyans and 12 Americans in 1998 (Booker).

Be sure there is a unique exact match between what you have listed in your Works Cited, and what you have in the text of your paper.

This section is based on the the advice published in the MLA website at www.mla.org.

Anyone who is familiar with online sources will immediately recognize that most of the items mentioned here are likely to be difficult - if not impossible -- to identify with certainty.

Remember the fundamental rules: You are trying to give credit to the person whose ideas you are using, and trying to tell where you got the information.

Do your best.

MLA Standards for Citing On-line Sources

The MLA recommends that the Works Cited have all of the following information in the following order, or as much of it as you can get... This list of rules is essentially directly copied from the MLA website, but to check the most recent recommendations, go to the actual MLA website where you can find the latest information or changes.

1. Name of the author, editor, compiler or translator, in reversed form (Smith, Jane)

2. Title of the poem, story, or work being discussed, put in quotation marks, and followed by the descriptive term "Online Posting." If the site or page has no title, use a description such as "Home Page" or try to make a brief unique title that describes what you are looking at. Then you can use that title in creating your in-text citations.

3. Title of a book, underlined.

4. Name of the author, editor, compiler, translator of the text, if not already included.

5. Publication information for the print version of the source, if any.

6. Title of the project, database, periodical or site, underlined, or, if the site or page has no title, use a description such as "Home Page" or try to make a brief unique title that describes what you are looking at. Then you can use that title in creating your in-text citations.

7. Name of the editor or director of the project or database.

8. Version number, or volume number, or other identifying numbers.

9. Date of electronic publication, file date, latest update, or posting.

10. Name of the subscription service, if any, and name, city, state of the library where the service is used.

11. For a posting to a discussion list or forum, the name of the list or forum.

12. Page numbers, if any. (Do not use the page numbers of the printout).

13. Name of any institution or organization associated with the web site or source.

14. Date when you, the researcher, accessed the source.

15. Electronic address, or url placed in angle brackets <http://mmcconeghy.com/>

On Cheating...

"For me the question is, Am I paying attention to my own unspoken motives, to what's going on inside my head and heart? The environment, the law, the way the board and the CEO interact, can help a person stay on the right track. But in the end it always comes down to one's own values. As Buddha says in verse 121 of the Dhammapada, "Do not think lightly of evil, saying, 'It will not come to me.' By the constant fall of water drops, a pitcher is filled; likewise the unwise person, accumulating evil little by little, becomes full of evil."

Daniel Vasella, CEO of the giant phamaceutical company, Novartis, in an interview in Fortune magazine. Nov. 2002