Literature in English: MLA Style & Managing Your Citations

MLA (Modern Langauge Association) style is commonly used in first-year Writing courses, as well as humanities disciplines such as English and Comparative Literature. 

For complete details on citing sources with MLA style, consult the MLA Handbook, 8th edition. Print copies are available in the Millar Library in the 2nd floor Reference collection; in Reserves; and there is a copy that can be checked out. 

MLA maintains a the MLA Style Center which provide examples of using the style and indepth discussions about its various elements. The site includes the excellent Using MLA Format page which bills itself as "Learn Everything You Need to Know About MLA Style".

Another helpful web site providing guidance and examples of MLA style is produced by the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University (Purdue OWL). Purdue OWL MLA Style. Note: Purdue OWL has recently partnered with the commercial entity Citation Machine and all of the style explanation pages feature Citation Machine's generator form at the top. Aside from the extremely limited number of formats the Citation Machine supports, it's not free. It will generate one free citation and then the user has to sign up for a subscription.  (Zotero and Mendeley looking better and better?  Read on.)

Zotero is a citation management application that allows you to collect book and article citations from the library catalog and other databases. Zotero also connects with your word processor (MS Word, Google Docs, Libre Office) to insert in text citations and generate a reference list in your selected citation style. 

See the library guide, Manage Citations with Zotero, on how to use this tool. The Library provides workshops and support for Zotero.