Documenting Sources

These guidelines on MLA documentation style are the only ones available on the Internet that are authorized by the Modern Language Association of America. See www.mla.org for more information.  The MLA guidelines on documenting online sources are explained in detail in the fifth edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (1999) and in the second edition of the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (1998).

Documentation should proceed in this order:

1. Name of the author, editor, compiler, or translator of the source (if available and relevant), reversed for alphabetizing and followed by an abbreviation, such as ed., if appropriate

2. Title of a poem, short story, article, or similar short work within a scholarly project, database, or periodical (in quotation marks); or title of a posting to a discussion list or forum (taken from the subject line and put in quotation marks), followed by the description Online posting

3. Title of a book (underlined)

4. Name of the editor, compiler, or translator of the text (if relevant and if not cited earlier), preceded by the appropriate abbreviation, such as Ed.

5. Publication information for any print version of the source

6. Title of the scholarly project, database, periodical, or professional or personal site (underlined); or, for a professional or personal site with no title, a description such as Home page.

7. Name of the editor of the scholarly project or database (if available)

8. Version number of the source (if not part of the title) or, for a journal, the volume number, issue number or other identifying number

9. Date of electronic publication, of the latest update, or of posting 

 

10.  For a work from a subscription service, the name of the service and--if a library is the subscriber--the name and city (and state abbreviation, if necessary) of the library

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

12. The number range or total number of pages, paragraphs, or other sections, if they are numbered

13. Name of any institution or organization sponsoring or associated with the Web site

14. Date when the researcher accessed the source

15. Electronic address, or URL, of the source (in angle brackets); or, for a subscription service, the URL of the service's main page (if known) or the keyword assigned by the service

 

Web Sources:


Scholarly Project On Line:


Victorian Women Writers Project. Ed. Perry Willett. Apr. 1997. Indiana U. 26 Apr. 1997

 

<http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/>.

Professional Web Site:


Portuguese Language Page. U of Chicago. 1 May 1997  <http://humanities.uchicago.edu/romance/>.

Periodical On Line:

 

Barbería, José Luis. "Un jesuita español escribió hace 300 años una ópera en Bolivia."  El País on the web 28 November

1999. <http://www.elpais.es/>.

Personal Web Site:


Lancashire, Ian. Home page. 1 May 1997 <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~ian/index.html>.

Article in a Magazine On Line:

 

Landsburg, Steven E. "Who Shall Inherit the Earth?" Slate 1 May 1997. 2 May 1997 <http://www.slate.com/Economics/97-

05-01/Economics.asp>.


Print Sources:

Book (& Edition of Book):
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro.  El Alcalde de Zalamea.  Ed. José María Diez-Borque.  Madrid:  Castalia, 1976.

—-.       Celos aun del aire matan.  Ed. and Intro. Matthew D. Stroud.  Foreword by Jack Sage.  San Antonio:  Trinity UP,

1981.

Eagleton, Terry.  Literary Theory:  An Introduction.  2nd ed.  Minneapolis:  U of Minnesota P, 1996.

Book with more than one volume:

Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio.  Desde Carlos V a la Paz de los Pirineos, 1517-1660.  Historia de España. Vol. 4.  Gen eds.

Hugh Thomas and J. H. Parry. Barcelona:  Ediciones Grijalbo, 1974.

Article in a Journal:
Durán, Javier. "Apuntes sobre el grotesco en tres novelas de José Revueltas." Chasqui 28.2 (1999): 89-102.

-----.      "The Prison as World, the World as Prison: Time and Space in Two Novels by José Revueltas." Revista  Monográfica 11.1 (1995): 247-57.

Article in a Book that has an Editor:

Bakewell, Peter.  "Spanish America:  Empire and Its Outcome."  The Spanish World.  Ed. J. H. Elliott. New York:  Harry N.

Abrams, 1991.  65-84.