MLA Style

 

The final authority for MLA format is the Modern Language Association as published in its MLA Handbook. The final authority for the bibliographic form used in your paper is your professor.

Book:

Angelou, Maya. Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. New York: Random, 1993.

Journal article:

MacCannell, Julie Flower. "On Woman's Speech." American Journal of Psychoanalysis 54.2 (1994): 143-148.


Fulltext journal article from a database:

Walker, Pierre A. "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." College Literature 22.3 (1995): 91-109. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Goshen College Good Library. 9 Oct. 2001.

Newspaper article:

Richardson, Lynda. "At 73, a Robust 'People's Poet' Embraces the Prosaic." New York Times 1 Feb. 2002: B6.

Video:

Kindred Spirits: Contemporary African-American Artists. Dir. Christine McConnell. Videocassette. North Texas Public Broadcasting, Inc., 1992.

Essay in a multivolume work (each volume with a unique title):

Bloom, Lynn Z. "Maya Angelou." In Afro-American Writers After 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers. Ed. Thadious M. Davis & Trudier Harris. Detroit: Gale, 1985. Vol. 38 of Dictionary of Literary Biography. 3-12.

Excerpt from a source reprinted in multivolume work:

Neubauer, Carol E. "Maya Angelou: Self and a Song of Freedom in the Southern Tradition." Southern Women Writers: The New Generation. Ed. Tonette Bond Inge. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1990. 114-42. In Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. James P. Draper. Detroit: Gale, 1993. Vol. 77. 130-131.

Web site:

Dr. Maya Angelou: The Official Website. 2001. 9 Oct. 2001<http://www.mayaangelou.com/>.

 

More Resources

There are a number of WWW links to help with MLA documentation style. Try these:

Note also the following books in the Reference Room of our library. All of these plus more are located on the counter top at the north end of the Reference Room and labeled "Style Guides."

  • Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 2003. (Ref LB 2369.G53 2003)

  • Keene, Michael L and Katharine H. Adams. Easy Access. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006. (Ref PE1408 .K425 2006)

  • Maimon, Elaine P., Janice H. Peritz, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. A Writer's Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2007. (Ref PE 1408 .M3366 2007)

Updated 19-Feb-2008 SWH