A Student-Friendly Guide To The MLA Citation Style

1. A Student-Friendly Guide To The MLA Citation Style Numerous citation generators for the MLA style exist all over the web. While most are accurate, many suffer from technical glitches and deliver erroneous results frequently. Given the importance of citing references in academic papers, this article offers a detailed synopsis of the MLA citation style. Invest some time in reading this article and find out whether an MLA referencing generator cited your work correctly or not. General Guidelines The key rules for citing in the Modern Language Association format are s follows:  The list of references must begin on a separate page title, “Works Cited”. Most free MLA citation machines require one to add a list of references beforehand. Take note of all the crucial details of your information sources if you intend to use them

2.  MLA bibliography generators should be able to arrange all entries in an alphabetical manner, using the author’s last name. If no name is given, the first alphabet of the title is used, ignoring initials such as ‘A’, ‘An’, ‘The’ etc.  Every entry is to begin at the left margin. Indentation of following lines starts at 0.5 inches from the left margin.  MLA citation generators websites are notorious for not following punctuations, underlines and capitalisations. Keep a sharp eye out for such mistakes.  The official free MLA citation guide asks writers to shorten the names of any publishing company by removing any articles, business abbreviations and any descriptive words. However, the “UP” abbreviation is added when citing a university press. In-Text Citations The general norm is to present in-text citations in parentheses and correspond to an entry in the reference list.  The author’s last name and the page number are quite enough to indicate the location of the source in the citation list.  Repeating the author’s name in the citation, if it’s already there in the sentence, is unnecessary. Keep a check on this while using any MLA formatter online.

3. Reference Listing Guidelines Tally your MLA citation generated list with the following and make your citation lists error-free. Books with a single author Authors Last name, First Name and Middle initial [if any]. Italicized Title. Publication Location: Publishing Company, Year, Print. Note: For books with two or three authors, the names are given consecutively, as they appear on the source. Books with more than three authors First Author’s Last name, First name and Middle initial [if any], et al. ItaliciseTitle. Publication location: Publishing Company, Year. Print. Books with Editors Editor’s last name, First name and Middle initial [if available], Edition. Italicize Title. Publication Location: Publishing Company, Year. Print. Article from an educational journal Author's last name, First name and Middle initial. "Title of Article." Italicized Title of Journal volume. The issue [if available] (year): page number(s). Format. Article from a webpage Name of Author, Compiler, Director, Editor etc. of the work. “Title of the work.” URL title. Publisher or sponsor of the site (if absent, use N.p.), Date of publication

4. (day, month, and year, as available: I absent, use n.d.). Format. Date of access (day, month and year). Note: Formats are usually print or Web. Well, that’s the end of this quick guide to the MLA citation generator. Use it to perfect all your MLA citations. Source: http://my-assignment-help.bravesites.com/entries/general/a-student-fr iendly-guide-to-the-mla-citation-style